Lucky you’re not a climate “scientist” eh? Worse, you could be a skeptic.

On The ConversationMatthew Bailes, Pro Vice Chancellor at Swinburne University of Technology, is feeling sympathetic towards those poor climate scientists who have to deal with daily criticism, but he doesn’t seem to know much about how climate science works. I’d like to help him out, but don’t think the Conversation team would let me add my comments into his article, so I’ve done that here, responding to Bailes:

“Imagine for a minute that, instead of discovering a diamond planet, we’d made a breakthrough in global temperature projections. Let’s say we studied computer models of the influence of excessive greenhouse gases, verified them through observations, then had them peer-reviewed and published in Science.”

Verified?”#$%^!! Sorry, what’s that? No one in the official world of climate science has mentioned “verification” since the mid 1990′s. Shhh. In climate science they verify the observations first: when they fit the models, then they know the equipment worked.

“Instead of sitting back and basking in the glory, I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings.”

“People on the fringe of science would be quoted as opponents of our work, arguing that it was nothing more than a theory yet to be conclusively proven.”

“Conclusively proven?” This is the theory that has narrowed climate sensitivity all the way down to between 2.0 to 11.1 degrees C (none of which match the observations). Yes, I’d call that “conclusive”.

“There would be doubt cast on the interpretation of our data and conjecture about whether we were “buddies” with the journal referees.”

Why would anyone “cast doubt” on whether climate reviewers are “buddies”? It’s a dead-set certainty. The climate scientists own emails show it happens all the time, and they exclude people from the journals who aren’t buddies. Indeed it doesn’t just happen, it’s an unbreakable code. Recently a paper was published that accidentally didn’t include a sacred reviewer from the “buddies” team, and the editor was so shocked when he discovered the travesty, he resigned!

“If our opponents dug really deep they might even find that I’d once written a paper on a similar topic that had to be retracted. Before long our credibility and findings would be under serious question.”

Yes, life is tough for the people who call themselves “scientists” but haven’t verified their models, or found supportive observations, or realized they are barking up the wrong theory. But imagine instead, what it would be like if you were a scientist who found A Flaw in the Great Man-made Global Warming Theory. What glory awaits you? For starters no one has to “dig deep” to find all your past mistakes, your religion, your links and associations: all that mudslinging stuff has already documented at length by one of the paid up smear sites like DeSmog or Exxon Secrets. Now that’s something to really aim for, eh?

“It may come as a big surprise to many, but there is actually no difference between how science works in astronomy and climate change – or any other scientific discipline for that matter.

“We make observations, run simulations, test and propose hypotheses, and undergo peer review of our findings.

Either astronomy has gone cataclysmicly downhill, or Matthew Bailes doesn’t know that common climate science practices include inventing tricks to hide declines, intimidating editors, and hiding public data. Perhaps someone could tell him?

“Of course we all make mistakes. But eventually the prevailing wisdom of the community triumphs and the field advances.

Yes, we can only live in hope.

“It’s wonderful to be a part of that process.

“But on occasion those from the fringe of the scientific community will push a position that is simply not credible against the weight of evidence. This occurs within any discipline. But it seems it’s only in the field of climate science that such people are given airtime and column inches to espouse their views.

Given airtime and column inches? Are you kidding? The people pushing against the evidence don’t just get air-time and inches, they get $79 billion dollars and yearly trips to two-week-long junkets so they can pat each other on the back. What other field of science do you get to visit Cancun, Copenhagen and Bali year after year, so you can swap the latest “tricks” to hide the fact that your models don’t match any important observations?

Climate science is a special place to be.

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222 comments to Lucky you’re not a climate “scientist” eh? Worse, you could be a skeptic.

“Sadly, the same media commentators who celebrate diamond planets without question are all too quick to dismiss the latest peer-reviewed evidence that suggests man-made activities are responsible for changes in concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere.”

He knows that skeptics dismiss manipulated evidence that changes in concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere are responsible for global warming.

No one doubts that automobiles and once-booming industries in the West released CO2 to the atmosphere.

Now automobiles and relocated industries in China instead release CO2 to the atmosphere.

The diamond planet was featured in Time Magazine, the BBC and China Daily, to name but a few.

I was asked by many journalists about the significance of the discovery. If I were honest, I’d have to concede that, although worthy of publication in Science, in the field of astrophysics it isn’t that significant.

Oh, great. Another beat-up by posturing boffins, promoted in juvenile rags I won’t read even when they’re given away.

After decades of work the fringe groups finally manage to get the mainstream media onboard with their catastrafarian belief system.

Only to find that the serious people they wanted to reach are using the new media, which even Australias current regime cannot control.

Now that has truly got to suk for them.

They still don’t get the fact that the reason Gorebal warming gets so much exposure is because it is a political issue (Gore made it one), and that some opportunists are using it as an excuse to get their ideology stamped on everyones lives.

This is why its hotly contested more than, say pluto no longer being a planet, for example.

The possibility of a diamond planet (or one made of iron-nickel, Fe-Ni) became feasible it was realized in 1975:

One supernova made the solar system, ejecting material out – without complete mixing – into rings of elements somewhat like the onion-skin layered model of a supernova:

a) Fe,Ni formed iron meteorites and inner cores of terrestrial planets near the pulsar on which the Sun reformed.

b) S formed FeS inclusions in iron meteorites and Earth’s liquid outer core further from the proto-Sun.

c) Etc, etc, further away from the reforming Sun

d) Si and O formed stone (silicate) meteorites and Earth’s mantle

e) H, He, C and N formed the giant gaseous outer planets.

The scenario [1,2], constructed from literally hundreds of analyses on meteorites, planets, and the Sun, was opposed by proponents of the SSM Sun and AGW story for reasons only recently identified [3].

1. “Elemental and isotopic inhomogeneities in noble gases: The case for local synthesis of the chemical elements”, Transactions Missouri Academy of Science 9, 104-122 (1975)

Henry Ergas has another brilliant piece in The Australian absolutely slamming the CO2 legislation:

The Regulation Impact Statement released with the draft legislation does nothing to fill the gap that leaves. Indeed, it does not even meet the government’s own guidelines for such RISs: it is strikingly superficial, given what is at stake; it is vague and qualitative; and it completely ignores the risks created by locking in future governments. That it was approved by the Department of Finance merely highlights how flawed the RIS process now is. Decisions about this legislation will therefore be based on assertions, not evidence tested in the light of day. And that is a disgrace. Not only because it makes a mockery of the government’s claims about transparency. But also because the consequences of those decisions could be so great. And the poison pills built into the legislation would ensure those consequences were felt for decades to come.

No worries Madjak… good to see folks are vigilant. I must say everything I have read by Ergas has been spot on to date. There’s a chap with a firm grip on reality. Sadly politics has so very little to do with reality anymore… much like advocates of CAGW, no wonder they are such compatible bedfellows.

EVERY Australian should read this article. Adam Smith has telling everyone this in previous threads but I’m not sure many have caught on to what he was actually saying.That is , he was crowing about how the legislation and the way the Parliamentary system worked would protect what his side wanted to happen.
This is why Bob Brown was able to stand at meeting with head business people( at the Press Club , I think ) some weeks ago and say he can categorically say the legislation would not be repealed. Now whether he is right on this is up to the legal guys to fight over.
But this shows that arguing over the science is really abit of a side show and some of the comments by Chris Monckton about the effect on the Australian economy were not as inflammatory as his critics made out.

MV ( I think) pointed out that the GG has the capacity to keep returning legislation to the Parliament for ammendment if it is deemed not to be up to scratch.

As the representative of the Crown which I believe means the Commonwealth (i.e. the citizens) the GG has to represent the people.

Perhaps the campaign should be concentrated on the GG. Protests, demonstrations & communications may ultimately be best directed at the GG so she is under no illusions as to whom she is responsible ( & how keen the monitoring of her performance is)

All that needs to be done is to convince the public that humans cannot alter the course of nature, never have , never will.They can spruik all the science they like , but in the end , nature will win every time.

Unfortunately I started reading the comments at that edu site. Government education in action! Reminds me of Mark Steyn’s comments on the “diversity” game played in universities: they want diversity in everything … but thought. Anyway, I dropped in my own, for what it’s worth:

“OK, then, let’s cut the tens of billions of dollars spent annually on Climate Science to the level enjoyed by, say, Solid State Physics, and I’m sure the world – sceptics included – would be happy to celebrate the discoveries of Climate Scientists. If they make any.”

either we stop playing politics and realise CAGW is an attempt to re-engineer the Western economy, or we will gain nothing. MSM attempts to characterise the battle as between “left” and “right” in Australia and the US is a game to keep at least partisan political grouping onside. take note of all the rightwing govts in europe backing the scam. take note of the Coalition’s costly plan to pretend to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. let’s fight to stop this insanity across the political spectrum:

16 Sept: SMH: Lenore Taylor: Abbott adamant his plan cheaper
Mr Abbott believes his plan can achieve emissions reductions more cheaply than the government’s carbon tax, but the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network told the Herald yesterday that by ruling out international carbon permits he would double the cost…
Yesterday farming groups questioned the centrepiece of the policy, massive greenhouse gas reductions through relatively cheap soil carbon projects, which would be essential for the Coalition to achieve its 5 per cent abatement target within budget.
The Coalition aims to achieve 60 per cent of Australia’s total abatement task through soil carbon at a cost of between $8 and $10 a tonne.
The National Farmers Federation says the potential and cost of soil carbon remains unknown.
”It’s an untested area. We are just starting to see what can be achieved,” said its general manager of policy, Charlie McElhone.
One big potential problem was the requirement under international and Australian rules that carbon sequestered in soil remain there for 100 years, he said.
Mike Kiely, of the Carbon Farming and Trading Association, who was cited by the Coalition when it launched its policy document, said there was ”no way farmers could deliver soil carbon for $8 to $10 a tonne under the existing rules”.
But according to Mr Kiely ”the Coalition is committed to changing the rules and that could make a difference to price”. He said his organisation supported changing the 100-year rule to just 25 years.http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/abbott-adamant-his-plan-cheaper-20110915-1kbyz.html

Guys, whatever seems theoretically possible by looking at the words of the Constitution, let’s leave the GG and the traditions and the conventions out of this. If it costs billions to undo the damage of a Green/GetUp/ALP government, we simply shell out the billions when the time comes.

We’re the greatest little country that ever was, right? We can easily digest the follies of a Gillard or two. Imagine the wealth when this vacuous Green fetishism has been consigned to history’s dustbin. We can afford these idiocies.

We are not the Lucky Country. That title was given to us by a finger-wagging leftist bore. We are the Got-It-Right Country. Much of that has to do with a written Constitution that is flawed and malleable, like all such documents, and which needs the support of conventions and what used to be called Gentlemen’s Agreements. (Fraser was no gentleman, and it shows.)

We are also the first-fruits of the European Enlightenment, and of a “Glorious Revolution” which occurred in England a century before we existed. That revolution was not altogether glorious, but it ended absolutism, by law but also by convention.

I don’t want the Governor General to become politically active and save me from her son-in-law’s political rival. I want her to cut ribbons and sign stuff.

Adam Smith has telling everyone this in previous threads but I’m not sure many have caught on to what he was actually saying.That is, he was crowing about how the legislation and the way the Parliamentary system worked would protect what his side wanted to happen.

We all caught onto what Dr Smith was saying, I think. He was literally crowing about it on the other threads, to which I suggested that it was economic vandalism to the nth degree. The will of the people having been totally subverted without consultation and without open discussion of the ramifications of all aspects of this tax and it’s furtive aims. It is inflationary in ever increasing degrees, it stymies productivity across the spectrum of the economy, and will send money off shore faster than you can poke a stick at it, and then he has the gall to gloat about it. It’s like the pyromaniac laughing as the flames engulf a preschool. People like “Adam Smith”, who are attacking the very democracy that has allowed them wealth, affluence and freedom of opinion, absolutely fill me with a revulsion that goes beyond words.

14 Sept: Reuters: David Fogarty: Australia adds opt-in rule for polluters in CO2 scheme
That could benefit carbon offset firms such as Carbon Conscious (CCF.AX) and CO2 Group, (COZ.AX), the country’s main developer of tree plantations for carbon offsets.
Others wanted to be able to take advantage of carbon pricing hedging instruments that are expected to be offered by banks and exchanges once the scheme starts.
“It makes sense for large players,” said Tim Jordan, carbon analyst for Deutsche Bank in Sydney.
“Just as they manage their foreign currency risk, or a whole range of input costs through financial instruments, they would like to manage their carbon liability that way too,” he told Reuters.http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/14/uk-australia-carbon-idUSLNE78D01L20110914

15 Sept: Reuters: NZ carbon trading expansion should be slowed: review
The expansion of the world’s only national carbon trading scheme outside Europe should be slowed to minimize the costs to business and households, according to a New Zealand government review which also recommended urgent scrutiny of disputed HFC carbon offsets.
The energy, transport and industrial sectors would have until 2015, two years longer than previously proposed, to pay the full cost of a NZ$25 ($20.25) a tonne of carbon charge for emissions under the review released on Thursday…
The review flagged greater scrutiny of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) certified emission reduction offsets, saying the government should “urgently” consider whether they proposed a significant risk and whether a time limit should be imposed on their eligibility.
CERs are internationally tradeable offsets under the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol and are generated by clean energy projects in developing countries. The New Zealand government allows CERs to be imported for use in the scheme but the panel heard concerns that CERs from HFC-23 projects could flood the local market and drive down carbon prices.
The European Commission is moving to ban CERs from projects that destroy HFC-23, a powerful greenhouse gas, from May 2013, because they could distort the carbon trading market and undermine moves to promote renewable energy…
Under Thursday’s recommendations, the price cap would increase to NZ$30 in 2013 and rise by NZ$5 per year until reaching NZ$50 in 2017.
New Zealand’s scheme, considered by green groups as too soft on big polluters, allocates up to 90 percent of pollution permits for free to energy-intensive firms that export their goods to nations without carbon caps. That rate of allocation should remain unchanged, the panel said…http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/15/us-newzealand-carbon-idUSTRE78E0QI20110915

14 Sept: Reuters: Climate investment needs “quantum leap”, says U.N. official
Companies that advocate climate change need to have a stronger, unified voice to counteract others that might oppose stronger action, said Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, in a webcast of a meeting of chief executives in London.
“A serious group of companies has a voice much louder and operates in more unison but is still stuck in the technologies and fuels of yesterday,” she told the meeting.
“If you don’t have a voice equally as orchestrated, governments are going to take timid decisions.”…
Current global GDP of around $60 trillion is forecast to rise to $120-$200 trillion by 2030, Figueres said.
At the same time, carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut to 20 billion tonnes by 2030, from the current 30 billion.
More firms need to radically change their business models to factor in sustainability and climate issues, said Ian Cheshire, chief executive of retailer the Kingfisher Group.
“Many companies are not taking enough risks because they do not have enough confidence that climate investment can provide adequate returns,” he said…
Pension funds have often been touted as huge sources of potential capital, but Alan Brown, chief investment officer of Schroders Plc, which has $326 billion of assets under management, said spurring enough private sector investment could be a “Herculean task” because investors need better incentives.
“We need to look to the asset management industry’s owners and make it clear to fiduciaries to bear in mind a broad range of stakeholder views and not just the risk of return,” he said.http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/14/us-climate-investment-idUSTRE78D58320110914

note where i’ve capitalised “BIPARTISAN” and “DESIGNED BY THE SAME PEOPLE”. i will vote informal until the whole CAGW charade is over:

15 Sept: ABC Lateline: Turnbull on media, tax and Kevin Rudd
TONY JONES: OK. I mean, you’ve already committed yourself once to a BIPARTISAN plan for a CPRS and you argue it has a lot in common with the Government’s plan …
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I don’t argue it; it obviously does. I mean, I’m not going to – if someone asks me a question, I’m not – look, I’m not – I’ve been through the pain barrier, Tony. I don’t – I’m not going to stand up there and give slippery, disingenuous answers.
If somebody asks me a question, straight question and says, “Does this scheme have lot in common with Rudd’s CPRS and the ETS that John Howard was proposing to introduce?” The truthful answer is yes. They’ve all got a lot in common. They’ve all got differences and some of those differences are more significant than others, but, you know, ultimately at the core there is a cap-and-trade scheme and there’s a commonality.
They’ve been DESIGNED BY THE SAME PEOPLE. The same team that worked for us worked for Rudd and have worked for Gillard, so – but that’s beside the point. I’m not going to sit here and mislead you and try to suggest that there’s some – you know, it’s a completely different creature.
Yes, it’s got a lot of differences and, you know, we could talk about them for hours. But, fundamentally, they’re very similar.
TONY JONES: Let me go to couple of those really basic questions because one of the things that’s similar is that it had a carbon tax attached to it, a one-year fixed price which was therefore a one-year carbon tax, wasn’t it? If you’re saying a three-year fixed price is a carbon tax then a one-year fixed price …
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well that’s how Julia Gillard described it. She described it as a carbon tax. I mean, she could have equally described it as an emissions trading scheme with a three-year fixed period but she chose to call it a carbon tax.
TONY JONES: It perhaps would have been a lot wiser for her to do that in retrospect, but …
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, that’s what she did.
TONY JONES: But the point is the same thing applies, doesn’t it? That one-year fixed-price period was in effect a tax for a year, and all of your colleagues in the Liberal Party at the time, or a majority of them, agreed to it, including all of those who are now speaking against the carbon tax.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, look, there was always – I think whether it was when we were in government or when we were – when Rudd brought up his CPRS and we were negotiating with him to try to get a bipartisan outcome and get the thing settled and dealt with, there was always – the core idea was a cap-and-trade scheme, so you put a cap on emissions and people have to buy permits and the value of the permits went up and down with the market, and then for the purpose of stability there was going to be – and bedding down, there was going to be a one-year fixed-price period. Now …
TONY JONES: So you don’t really regard the three-year fixed-price period as a tax?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no – Tony, this is where the whole thing is an exercise in arid semantics.
Now, again, I’m not going to be disingenuous with you. You can argue it’s a tax whether it’s cap-and-trade or a fixed-price. I mean, from the point of view of industry and the public, putting a price on carbon involves a cost, and it’s a cost whether the cost is fixed or whether it fluctuates.
Now from a technical point of view, there is a difference between cap-and-trade and a tax, a fixed price, but from an impact on cost of living, impact on the cost of electricity, impact on industry, you know, it’s the same. You put a price on carbon, you make carbon intensive energy and products more expensive than less carbon intensive one.
TONY JONES: OK. Let me ask you a …
MALCOLM TURNBULL: So you can argue they’re all taxes, right? So, you know, let’s – this is the sort of …
TONY JONES: We’re agreeing on this.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Just spent four days in Canberra going round and round with this sort of stuff. We don’t have to drive your viewers mad with the same thing.
TONY JONES: OK, well let me ask you a very basic question. If Tony Abbott wins the next election, rescinds the carbon pricing legislation and puts his own direct action into place, will Australian families really be better off?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, time will tell, but, I mean, certainly there – certainly the – there won’t be an impact on the cost of electricity, and that’s the whole argument. I mean, the Coalition’s policy, the direct action policy, which I recall explaining on your program once before which didn’t seem to go down very well in some quarters, but …
TONY JONES: Because you basically said it was rubbish.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: I didn’t say that! That’s outrageous! I explained it accurately. But the point is it is a – the scheme, as you know, rather than putting a price on carbon, which mean you put a price on electricity – I mean this is where Greg Hunt calls the carbon tax and electricity tax, and in a sense, you know, there’s some – that’s a fair description.
I mean, it’s not something a lawyer would say, but from a political point of view, that’s a fair description. The Coalition’s plan is to use taxpayers’ dollars which have been raised from all the normal sources of revenue a government has and buy carbon offsets to offset emissions.
TONY JONES: Is it clear to you which of these schemes’ll be more expensive at this stage to the taxpayer?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Overall to the economy or to the taxpayer?
TONY JONES: To the taxpayer.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well I think overall in the – according to the budget that Greg’s developed, I think the direct action plan would be – and of course it’s got a shorter timeframe, which is a very significant point – it would involve a lower cost to the budget, yeah, sure. A lower cost to the economy, I guess, is a better way to put it.
TONY JONES: And in the long-term?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well it’s not a – this is the thing. I mean, the direct action plan is not a long-term plan, it’s not intended to be. It’s intended to get you to 2020 and it’s – by that stage, the plan that by 2015 it would be looked at again and a new mechanism put in place.
So, the emissions trading scheme that Gillard is proposing is designed to be a long-term way to put a price on carbon that can cut emissions for – you know, right out to 2050 and beyond.
The direct action plan is designed to enable the Government to buy enough offsets to meet the five per cent target that the Coalition and the Government are both committed to which is a 2020 target, but it is not – this is not a criticism of it because it is not designed to go beyond 2020…http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3318972.htm

I don’t know where to start with my criticisms – there’s so many. I’ll confine myself to just a few.

1) He writes; “Based on the planet’s density, and the likely history of its system, we concluded that it was certain to be crystalline. In other words, we had discovered a planet made of diamond.”

Well, his paper presented absolutely no evidence that the planet is made of “diamond”. Instead, it is based on conjecture of what he admits is a poorly understood process of the “planet” likely being a stripped down white dwarf and not a true planet at all (whatever that is). The authors then draw several very long bows to conclude that the planet “must” be made of diamond. Many astronomers would be embarrassed to draw such a conclusion without more evidence.

Anyway, calling it a “diamond” planet was more in line with getting publicity, which as he states, worked wonders. Also, continually repeating the claim that the planet was made of “diamond” (when there’s little evidence for it), doesn’t make it so. Repetition of a hypothesis without good evidence, doesn’t make it true. But then again, that’s what climate alarmists are good at, isn’t it?

He writes; “Sadly, the same media commentators who celebrate diamond planets without question are all too quick to dismiss the latest peer-reviewed evidence that suggests man-made activities are responsible for changes in concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere.”

Perhaps the media commentators should question the diamond planet. They may find that the evidence that it’s made of diamond is as “real” as catastrophic global warming. Matthew Bailes should stick to astronomy and steer clear of astrology.

2) He writes; “And yet the diamond planet has been hugely successful in igniting public curiosity about the universe in which we live.

In that sense, for myself and my co-authors, I suspect it will be among the greatest discoveries of our careers.

Our host institutions were thrilled with the publicity and most of us enjoyed our 15 minutes of fame. The attention we received was 100% positive, but how different that could have been.”

Well, of course his institution was thrilled by the publicity. It will guarantee continued funding and employment. But, we still don’t know if the planet is made of “diamond” or not. Doesn’t this remind you of the way “climate science” is done?

3) He writes; “If our opponents dug really deep they might even find that I’d once written a paper on a similar topic that had to be retracted.”

He’s a bit vague here. What could he mean? Perhaps it’s to do with his role in the false planet “discovery” of 1991. Working at Jodrell Bank Observatory in 1991, he used an inadequate computer programme to analyse the motion of the pulsar, PSR1829–10. He reported the discovery of a planet with 10 times the mass of the Earth, and in an almost circular six-month orbit. The “discovery” was sent to the journal, NATURE, it was peer-reviewed and published. Some time later, after further analysis, his team realised that the “planet” was not real, but an artifact of their computer programme. They had insufficiently taken into account the Earth’s motion about the Sun. They had indeed detected planetary motion, but it was of the Earth around the Sun and NOT of the phantom planet about the pulsar. Matthew Bailes’ colleague, Dr Andrew Lyne, made the courageous decision to very publicly inform his colleagues of their error at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society some months later in 1992. It was because of the integrity of Andrew Lyne, that the “discovery” was retracted, and NOT because of the peer-review process nor the observations of the wider astronomical community – the retraction had nothing to do with those “processes”.

What does this episode teach us? Firstly, one should never rely too much on computer models. They’re written by fallible human beings after all – reality will always win out in the end. Secondly, it was not the peer-review process that exposed the error, but the integrity of the researchers themselves. Admittedly, simple observations of the pulsar over a period of a year by their colleagues would have exposed the error, so they went public with it before their error was exposed by others. In astronomy, it’s difficult to with-hold data since the heavens are accessible to everyone, so it’s difficult to with-hold or hide the data. But, in “climate science” it’s easy, which makes it difficult to assess the validity of any “finding”.

The climategate emails reveal that some climate “scientists” don’t have the integrity of Andrew Lyne.

I’m just simply blown away that this Matthew Bailes bloke thinks that his argument is cogent, logical and persuasive. Arguments such as this only serve to further entrench my incredulity.

The reason people accept diamond planet is because people don’t care. It’s like yeah that’s interesting, cool, move on. Reminds me of the Pioneer Anomaly. When I first heard about it my reaction was: wow cool, very interesting. Then recently it came to light that the Anomaly now has a very prosaic explanation (heat emissions from the RTG), and my reaction was: wow cool, very interesting. But anything that flows into social/political arena, suddenly the laity have a vested interest one way or another so they scrutinise it alot closer. Climate change potentially affects us all, if we choose not to act and the hypothesis turns out to be true then we suffer, if we choose to act and the hypothesis turns out to be false then we suffer (due to misapplication of our resources). Do people like Matthew not understand this? That if you demand things from people they will demand an explanation; and they are entitled to come to the opinion that your explanation is insufficient.

Australians have less than a week to make submissions on Julia Gillard’s carbon tax that she explicitly promised to never introduce.

Yesterday the Labor-Greens dominated inquiry into the 1,100-plus pages of carbon tax legislation resolved to give Australians just six days to make submissions to the inquiry, despite the massive impact this tax will have.

‪The committee was also advised that there was not enough time to hold hearings in all states. Most Australians will miss out on the chance to be heard, with those outside of the eastern states or in regional Australia likely to have to resort to phone or video conferencing at best.

‪Despite Julia Gillard making it as hard as possible for Australians to have their say on her carbon tax, I urge Australians to make their views known by lodging a submission, no matter how brief.
‪
Written submissions must be received by next Thursday, 22 September. They can be emailed to jscacefl@aph.gov.au or posted to the select committee care of Parliament House, Canberra.

‪Labor is already denying Australians a vote on whether or not to have a carbon tax, but hopefully people will not allow Julia Gillard’s tactics to silence them as well.

i obviously was not paying attention prior to Climategate or even in the months afterwards, because i did not understand the same people prepared the CPRS/CEF/ETS or whatever, except for some Garnaut touches on Gillard’s watch, which give some level of compensation of the less well off.

8 Feb 2010: Australian: Turnbull’s speech on the CPRS
That is why in 2006 Prime Minister John Howard established the emissions trading task group headed by Dr Peter Shergold, the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. The task group also included leaders from the industries most directly affected, such as transport, aluminium, mining, agriculture and power generation. In 2007 the Howard government adopted the Shergold task group’s recommendation to establish an emissions trading scheme in advance of and in order to promote a global agreement, and we began to introduce the necessary legislation…
But, given we have an apparent bipartisan agreement that emissions should be reduced by five per cent of 2000 levels by 2020, is an emissions trading scheme, this CPRS, at a general level the best policy to achieve the desired outcome? Believing as I do, as a Liberal, that market forces deliver the lowest cost and most effective solution to economic challenges, the answer must be yes…
Until 1 December last year, there was a bipartisan commitment in Australia that this carbon price, this exercise in reducing emissions, should be imposed by means of a market based mechanism – this emissions trading scheme. At their core, therefore, these bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd….http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/turnbulls-speech-on-the-cprs/story-e6frgczf-1225827912208

people ask who is behind the present PM? answer is the same people who were behind Howard and Rudd:

10 July: Crikey: Bernard Keane: Carbon tax: key changes reflect the Greens, Garnaut
After the drama and inordinate political cost of abandoning the CPRS, the Government has relied heavily on the Rudd-era scheme in its “Clean Energy Future” proposal that will become Australia’s carbon pricing regime from July 1, 2012.
The CEF hews closely to the CPRS in its mature stage of operation, directing most support to households but providing extraordinarily generous assistance to emissions intensive, trade-exposed industries for a scheme that, rather than being a new tax, which actually cost the Budget about a billion dollars a year in its initial period…
Crucially, in addition to assistance payments to pensioners and Family Tax Benefit recipients, the government has adopted Garnaut’s recommendation of tying compensation to tax reform, overhauling the personal income tax regime to massively increase the tax-free threshold, with corresponding increases in the current 30% tax rate to offset the increase for high income earners, who will see no tax rise or come out a few dollars ahead of where they currently are. This is designed to significantly lower effective marginal tax rates for low-income earners, encouraging participation and removing the burden of tax return lodgement from 1m taxpayers.http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/07/10/carbon-tax-cprs-garnaut-greens-expediency-equals/

hate to say it folks, but it is arguably better for pensioners and low-income people to get some compensation when this carbon trading nonsense kicks in.
i’m still voting informal, because i’m totally against the commodification of carbon dioxide, but i do wonder why so many sceptic sites have been concentrating on the carbon tax for months, yet never focused on emissions trading which is the real killer. i’ve asked on sceptic sites what the Coalition’s position on an ETS was, yet no-one ever explained the above to me. likewise, Bolt has never asked Coalition guests about it on his Sunday TV program or made an issue of it on his blog. shame really, cos i’ve wasted much time wading thru nonsense about commies and green fascists, and juliar, when the Coalition is part of the same racket to commodify carbon dioxide.

The folks at Catallaxy files pointed out how to deal with the carbon tax and compensation for permits. Just issue lots of permits driving the cost to zero. There’s apparently also a problem with the private property concept here which is open to legal challenge.

cos i’ve wasted much time wading thru nonsense about commies and green fascists, and juliar, when the Coalition is part of the same racket to commodify carbon dioxide.

Funny, I could have sworn I’d made at least thirty posts just in the various threads on this site alone, pointing out this very thing.

Couple the above with the fact that ex-Goldman Sachs Director Malcolm Turnbull is STILL pushing for an ETS, AND enjoys a higher popularity rating than Abbott or JuLIAR, AND the Libs STILL have a “climate change” policy (meaning they accept the crap that CAGW is real), and people should be very, very wary of electing a Lib government with an overwhelming mandate to do anything.

MV ( I think) pointed out that the GG has the capacity to keep returning legislation to the Parliament for ammendment if it is deemed not to be up to scratch.

Yes, I have pointed that out in the past, but only in the context of the petition for the Convey of No Confidence. My point was that if they were going to gather signatures on a petition, it should be an ACTIONABLE request, not some pie-in-the-sky foolishness.

Getting people to sign a petition asking for a Parliament basically to dismiss itself was not only foolish, it was beholden on nobody and so could simply be ignored.

Which is precisely what happened.

However, as the GG CAN send proposed legislation back to the House for reconsideration on the basis that it does not reflect the WILL of the people, a petition to that effect WAS actionable, and would have required the GG to do “something” – either send it back, or answer the petition by saying she disagreed with its claim that the legislation did not reflect the WILL of the people.

I don’t for one second believe the GG would have sent the Bills back, but in having to explain her reasoning she would have woken a lot of people up to the facts that:

A) – There are in fact avenues for the presentation of grievance within our system, and
B) – ALL levels of government in OZ now – including the GG – are happy to completely ignore the systems of governance that they are supposed to represent and uphold.

The end result would have only been educational.

However, better that the farce of a petition demanding a government dismiss itself.
They didn’t, so what’s proposed now – another convoy?

The idiots running the government are too smart by half. If Abbott is the wrecker they say he is, then so what if it costs a few billion $. Better than the 100s of billions of $ it will cost us in the long run.

There are plenty of options to “undo the undoable”. He can drop the price to $1. He can alter the legislation to change the private ownership aspect of carbon trades. He can tie it in knots in many ways. If all else fails, he can just fork out our money for the long term gain. What is most pathetic is that they are simply too incompetent to get out of debt, even with the carbon tax, which is it’s primary purpose!!

Let us hope Labour is right for once and Abbott is the wrecker they say he is.

Tony Windsor of Channel 10 Late News said ‘He was encouraged by the Carbon Abatement he saw overseas’. What?! He had the cheek to mention that Abbott joked that he might consider selling his arse
to become PM. Well selling your soul is worse. He pushed
for NBN and now the Carbon Tax. Now Telstra is balking on taking over the NBN connection. It makes me sick. Anyway I don’t think they can impede bloggers or the media. We’d have a riot.

Adam Smith [was] telling everyone … how the legislation and the way the Parliamentary system worked would protect what his side wanted to happen.

I think you might be reading a bit too much into what Adam Smith had to say. He is no intellectual heavyweight.

Australian law is ultimately based on English law in that any English law that has not been expressly changed by an Act of Parliament in Australia, has been carried forward, and still holds. One of those English laws enshrines the principle that a Parliament cannot enact legislation “that seeks to bind subsequent Parliaments”, or to put it another way, any Parliament can repeal laws set by any previous Parliament. It would take a constitutional change to expect otherwise.

Now, being slippery customers, the current bunch of ALP politicians may try to enshrine penalty payments that may fall due should a specific Act of Parliament be repealed. But what can be enacted by legislation can be repealed by legislation, and they can also waive any penalties while they are at it. A few people may loose out in this process, but they will probably be people who supported the whole idea in the first place, and even if they were just innocent bystanders, the legislation could also address this.

The is a possibility that Adam Smith has been on the periphery of some “what if” discussions, and has misunderstood what was being discussed.

His/her pen name is also significant, since the real Adam Smith (or a more significant one, at any rate) published a book in 1776 called, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth Of Nations”. This book was, and is, incredibly important since it underpins the whole philosophy of free markets and free exchange – the absolute opposite of what our Adam Smith was proposing.

Ergas and Sheridan seem to be the only writers capable of incisive analysis on this issue. I wrote a comment, which didn’t get up, but I did thank him. Ergas is always careful not to stray too far into the science (or no doubt risk the shrill cries of denier as an attack on his rational argument), but he did mention the uncertainties.

I noticed a few of the comments wanting to know how we hold the politicians accountable should consensus change (once this scam is fully revealed).

If it came to it, a suitably worded National Referendum would undo these “carbon” laws in one fell swoop. Not even the High Court can usurp people power as expressed in a referendum to amend a section of the Constitution.

I know that this is way off topic, so Joanne, I hope you go easy on me for mentioning this here in this Thread.

Late Wednesday afternoon, KeithH asked at Joanne’s ‘Unthreaded’ Post if I would do some analysis on the Hepburn Wind Project.

If you’ve seen those TV ads championing the Government’s proposed CO2 Tax, er, sorry, Clean Energy Bills, you would have seen Hepburn Wind featured in quite a few places, the intent being that this is an example of that Clean energy future.

This project is an admirable initiative by the community near Daylesford in Victoria, but as an indicator to Labor’s vision for the future, a few things need to be highlighted.

There are 2 wind towers only giving a total Nameplate Capacity of 4.1MW, and delivering (theoretically) around 12,200 MWH, not for the people in the surrounding Hepburn Shire, but to the Victorian power grid.

These 2 wind towers, being such a small project, are not subject to all the hoops that a large scale plant is subject to, and yet, this still took 6 years to get from proposal to actual delivery of power. The cost is $13 Million, one million of that from a State Govt grant.

At their site, they make a lot of statements that seem one thing, and when translated, mean something entirely different. To the untrained observer, this project looks like it actually does achieve something.

Analysis shows where this ‘clever speak’ hypes the plant into something it patently isn’t.

For the minority Labor Government to be using this as an example for what they call a Clean Energy Future is something completely disingenuous indeed.

Now, being slippery customers, the current bunch of ALP politicians may try to enshrine penalty payments that may fall due should a specific Act of Parliament be repealed. But what can be enacted by legislation can be repealed by legislation, and they can also waive any penalties while they are at it.

But this is different because the ETS (which many people keep erroneously calling a carbon tax) involves businesses buying permits from the government to cover their pollution liability for each financial year. Once the business has bought the permit, they own it as a property right. The constitution says that if the federal government wants to take property off of an individual or business, it must provide compensation “on just terms”.

So in practice that means the government would have to shell out billions of dollars to buy back all the permits it has issued. This includes roughly $8 billion for one financial year worth of permits, but the government is also auctioning off forward dated permits that can be used in future financial years (it is doing this to ensure certainty particularly in the power generation sector).

So that means a future government would have to shell out at least $10 billion, or possibly much more in one year simply to shut the ETS down.

Where does this money come from?
Which taxes will the government increase?
Which services will the government cut?
Should the government just borrow the money?
Why would the government spend this much money for nothing?

It is for this very reason that I propose to you that once the ETS is law, no government will ever repeal it. I don’t care what the Opposition says because oppositions always say the will repeal taxes, but they never do it. Here are some examples: the capital gains tax, the fringe benefits tax, mining royalties on gold, the Medicare levy, and of course the GST.

The opposition at the time said it would repeal all of these taxes, levies or royalties, but they all exist today. The reason for this is simple. Once a tax is enacted it gets baked into the budget, and removing it would blow the budget.

His/her pen name is also significant, since the real Adam Smith (or a more significant one, at any rate) published a book in 1776 called, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth Of Nations”. This book was, and is, incredibly important since it underpins the whole philosophy of free markets and free exchange – the absolute opposite of what our Adam Smith was proposing.

Well this is a massive over simplification of the Wealth of Nations.

But one thing that Smith does point out is that over the long term, the market price for something will be the cheapest average price.

That’s exactly the principle the government has been guided by when deciding to use a market price for carbon abatement rather than the government picking and choosing abatement projects, which the last decade has shown has resulted in an average abatement cost that is double or triple what the market price would be.

What a pompous dope you are Dr Adam; $10 billion; ha, we’ll just vote another ALP government in; for them $10 billion is petty cash; they’re going to give $10 billion to those spivs and thieves who peddle W&S. What’s another $10 bill or so to buy back some carbon credits.

As for “just terms”, tell that to Peter Spencer. As for repealing the ETS, a new government doesn’t have to; the government can just excise those portions of any statutes which mandate prescribed CO2 reduction levels; the spivs can continue to trade carbon credits as long as they want.

It is clear the AGW promotion industry is getting nervous, if not desperate.
The Goreathon flop, and now this infantile whine about wicked skeptics.
Good luck with the death march approach your current PM is taking regarding attempt to make her lying to you unchangeable and difficult to reform.
Any hope to trigger an early election and put her policies in trash bin?

Tony, thanks for that article on Hepburn Wind. The whirlygigs and their infernal cabling are no laughing matter, but the numbers and figures are such a hoot.

When the insulation batts scheme folded, I remember walking through our local industrial estate past the shut-down factory of the most alarming of all the fly-by-night insulation firms. The fragments of cheap disintegrating Chinese batts were rolling about in the wind just like tumbleweeds in a Sergio Leone Western. All I could do was laugh.

And the batts were actually their best initiative!

I don’t want to make light of the waste, or of the elderly and frail folk too frightened to turn on a kettle. Green is grim, it is the triumph of intellectualism over intellect. But, when you think about it, Green can also be very funny.

$10 billion; ha, we’ll just vote another ALP government in; for them $10 billion is petty cash; they’re going to give $10 billion to those spivs and thieves who peddle W&S. What’s another $10 bill or so to buy back some carbon credits.

What are you talking about? Companies buy permits from the government. They give the government money. The government is going to spend about 60% of it on income tax cuts and pension and family payment increases. That money will be spent. If the Government wants to then turn around and buy back all the permits, it will have to find money from other sources to do so.

That’s the simple point I made, and I note that you just reverted to abuse instead of explaining how it is wrong.

As for repealing the ETS, a new government doesn’t have to; the government can just excise those portions of any statutes which mandate prescribed CO2 reduction levels; the spivs can continue to trade carbon credits as long as they want.

1) you didn’t explain how the government will compensate THE COMPANIES that had to buy all the permits
2) a new government wouldn’t be able to change the ETS legislation at all until early 2015 at the earliest

The companies DON’t have to buy permits; they can pay the tax and pass it onto the consumer; or go out of business; it is you who is now confusing the tax and an ETS which is a cap and trade; the tax does not set a ceiling on CO2 availability but assumes a 5% reduction due to carrot and stick policies; with no cap the situation is as I describe in the 1st sentence of this paragraph.

If there is a cap and permits are reduced then all a new government has to do is remove the cap.

Once again I want to say this is sickening; these policies are vindictive, economically and socially oppressive and boofheads like you regard them as the work of angels.

Actually they aren’t because the compensation payments, in the form of increases to pensions and family payments, will be starting before the revenue from the permits starts coming in. In the first year the ETS will cost the budget more than it raises through revenue from permits.

The companies DON’t have to buy permits; they can pay the tax and pass it onto the consumer;

Yes companies that produce a certain amount of greenhouse gases DO NEED TO BUY PERMITS. There is NO TAX.

Let me write that again. Companies that produce a certain amount of greenhouse gases DO NEED TO BUY PERMITS. There is NO TAX.

Now maybe your argument is that the business can pass on the cost of buying permits, that is true. But there is no tax.

it is you who is now confusing the tax and an ETS which is a cap and trade; the tax does not set a ceiling on CO2 availability but assumes a 5% reduction due to carrot and stick policies; with no cap the situation is as I describe in the 1st sentence of this paragraph.

No, you are demonstrating that you don’t understand the policy you are criticising. There is no cap until 2015/2016, but there are permits that companies must possess starting on July 1st of next year. If it turns out that a company has a lower than estimated pollution liability, the company can sell its excess permits back to the government. From July 1, 2015 the companies can also buy and sell permits to each other.

The 5% cut by 2020 is achieved by reducing the cap between 2015 and 2020 in order to achieve the required cut. Of course reducing the cap in this way effects the price of permits.

If there is a cap and permits are reduced then all a new government has to do is remove the cap.

This would require passing a new bill which in practical terms can’t be achieved until early 2015.

Once again I want to say this is sickening; these policies are vindictive, economically and socially oppressive and boofheads like you regard them as the work of angels.

1) Whenever you revert to abuse you just prove that I’m winning the debate.
2) A market price on carbon pollution is the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions.

The only viable alternative is the Coalition’s tax and spend socialist scheme which is estimated to cost about $10 billion a year. That’s about $1000 per year, every year, for every household in the country.

[Let’s see: The government uses its power to force companies to pay money to the government. If they use the right words, it’s not a tax — if they don’t use those words, it is a tax.]
Wrong. Provide me with another example of a tax that is a tradeable commodity.

Why should anyone care about this meaningless distinction?

Because the distinction isn’t meaningless.

If the government was actually instituting a tax, then it could be repealed with a bill by early 2015 and everything would be fine.

But since the government is instituting an ETS, businesses buy permits which then become a property right held by the business. The government can only get the permits back by first compensating the businesses, which would cost about $10 billion for one year.

Where does that money come from? Why hasn’t Tony Abbott explained where he will get that money?

The reason is simple. Because Abbott knows once the ETS comes in, there’s no way he can repeal it and still make the budget add up.

Business balance sheet distills down into two columns: income and expenditures. If income less the expenditures is positive a profit is realized, otherwise said company is losing money. Assuming a company is profitable, risk/reward (expenditure/profit)ratio is the second most important consideration. The higher the ratio the less attractive the business venture.

So what you say, we’re talking carbon tax/permits not profitability of companies. Call it a tax call it permit, either increase the risk/reward ratio. Companies, needing to reduce that ratio, will decrease expenditures and/or try to increase income. Decreasing expenditure means pink slipping workers or finding cheaper raw materials or moving the company operation to more friendly shores. Increasing income equals increase price to consumer.

The real beauty of the governmental imposed boondoggle, large companies may find it cheaper to pay a lobbyist to “incentivise” the bureaucrats to reduce the large companies tax/permit burden. And, AND at the same time the Socialist politicians will promises additional monies to the poor as a COLA (cost of living adjustment)…that is if the poor vote for them, quid pro quo. Meanwhile, the saps in the middle class become poor because they only get an increase in COL.

Wrong. Provide me with another example of a tax that is a tradeable commodity.

I agree that is a new twist — now you can try to find a “greater fool” to pay your tax for you. I disagree that it makes it unrepealable.

Because the distinction isn’t meaningless.

If the government was actually instituting a tax, then it could be repealed with a bill by early 2015 and everything would be fine.

But since the government is instituting an ETS, businesses buy permits which then become a property right held by the business. The government can only get the permits back by first compensating the businesses, which would cost about $10 billion for one year.

All the government needs to do to stop this ‘tax’ is quit selling new permits and quit enforcing adherence to the old ones. The secondary market for permits will then collapse and the ‘tax’ will be effectively repealed.

The only value of this ‘property right’ is that it keeps you from being fined or jailed by the government (pretty much like ‘protection’ money paid to organized crime). If the government stops fining and jailing people over it, the ‘property value’ instantly falls to zero.

A market price on carbon pollution is the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions.

The only viable alternative is the Coalition’s tax and spend socialist scheme which is estimated to cost about $10 billion a year. That’s about $1000 per year, every year, for every household in the country.

A far better alternative is to realize that there is no rational reason to limit carbon (dioxide) emissions in the first place. Try reading this.

It is worth noting that in the USA the official Skeptics society position on CAGW is that global warming is real, it is being caused by human activity, it is dangerous, and that the evidence is overwhelming.
Yeah.
It’s little wonder that I don’t listen to Skepticality podcast much any more. They lost quite a bit of credibility in my mind when they all started banging on about it. The editor of Skeptic Magazine spoke out against “deniers” on several occasions, but curiously the last book he read that convinced him of CAGW was written by our old mate Flim Flammery.

If you ever have a traffic accident, are in need of an urgent transfusion, and want to get blood out of a stone quickly, then make sure you have a self-styled “Skeptic in the positive sense” skeptic nearby as they seem to be able to extract a lot of confidence about trends based on one data point.

Here is Skepticality’s latest show which, unusually, is a panel session from a convention. The topic is “Education versus Debunking”.http://traffic.libsyn.com/skepticality/165_Skepticality.mp3 (32MB) (1h:10m)
Listen to the whole thing if you want as it is quite interesting, and the first 45 minutes of this are great, but the example of what I’m talking about happens in the Q&A section at the 0:52:30 mark.

In the interests of cutting to the chase, I’ll summarise. The story goes like this. Some girl gets up to ask the panel a question. She says she never thought there was any debate about AGW (and we later find out this means that she believed in it). She had an argument with a friend about CAGW and that ended badly. When she tried to email this friend later he said her address was now in his autodelete list and basically she is not his friend any more. Cue sympathetic oohs and ahhs. The question then is what to do about such a situation.

I suspect many of us have been in similar situations. So what do these pro “skeptics” say?

They label counter-catastrophists as “deniers”, call us “skeptics in the negative sense“, call CAGW scepticism a “nonsense belief system”, call the evidence behind alternatives views “pseudo-science”, state that our opinion has been “caressed” by corporate marketers and professional manipulators of public opinion, that it is motivated by political beliefs in the same way that religion provides a motivation for disbelief in evolution, and that the solution is to apply a lot of patience and basically talk down to us as though we are children.
No, that wasn’t a skeptic talking about warmists, despite the many parallels.

On a good day I could probably shrug off all of that except for the part about evidence. If there is even one repeatable observation that disproves the catastrophe hypothesis then it is time for these believers to hang up their “skeptic” hat and admit they were wrong.

Sorry, that’s a nasty “denier’s cough” I’ve been having lately. Doc says it’s due to evidence accumulating in my brain from too much reading. The cure is a modern form of acupuncture where they take the shirt off your back and push tax into it.

the argument; you don’t have an argument and that you can consider this mess, this disaster an argument shows you to be facile.

The tax changes ARE neutral; I am speaking of the alterations to the tax schedule. As for the handouts/bribes which this wretched government does so well, they are designed to compensate for the price rises from the TAX; they will not do it for reasons explained here:

The financial situation will be worse then this article describes because it does not deal with the $10 billion renewable energy donations and the NGER list of companies, which has now been removed by this censorious government, only showed a list of 150 companies not the at least 500 companies which will be impacted by this wicked TAX; so the amount $15 billion quoted in the article as being the amount of money gutted from the economy by the TAX is likely to be an UNDER-estimate.

In additions the handouts are derived from the TAX proceeds; those proceeds are based on the continuation of the companies which are being taxed. This is the basic flaw of the TAX and the compensation: the TAX is designed to put out of business the CO2 producing industries; once they are defunct there is no longer any funding to compensate for the impacts of the TAX.

It is true that the methodology of the TAX will be the purchase of permits [my mistake but it was late and your insouciance is infuriating and distracting as I'm sure you intend it to be] but those permits are the equivalent of tax receipts; the fact that they marketable is not unique; the recognised procedure by which liabilities and assets can be marketed is called subrogation; this characteristic of the permits does not stop the impost from being a TAX.

The effects of this TAX will be catastrophic for the Australian economy; we know that because of what has happened in Spain, Greece, Italy and California; and the fundamental point, which you ignore, is that it has NO scientific justification.

At least the cost of getting out the scheme seems to be dropping. You now say $10bill. Last week it was $30-$0 bill and then it dropped to $20bill. Now its $10bill — if Australia waits abit longer it could be down a few $mill. sarc off /

So what you say, we’re talking carbon tax/permits not profitability of companies. Call it a tax call it permit, either increase the risk/reward ratio. Companies, needing to reduce that ratio, will decrease expenditures and/or try to increase income. Decreasing expenditure means pink slipping workers or finding cheaper raw materials or moving the company operation to more friendly shores. Increasing income equals increase price to consumer.

Um, or they can cut greenhouse gas pollution so they don’t need to possess as many permits each year.

The real beauty of the governmental imposed boondoggle, large companies may find it cheaper to pay a lobbyist to “incentivise” the bureaucrats to reduce the large companies tax/permit burden. And, AND at the same time the Socialist politicians will promises additional monies to the poor as a COLA

The government already has a policy of cutting the company tax rate funded by increasing mining royalties (our mining royalties are too low compared to OECD standards).

It’s the Opposition that is proposing to introduce a super tax (a tax on top of a tax) to be paid by about Australia’s 1000 biggest companies.

The fact it would cost something like $10 billion just to shut down the scheme is the reason that Tony Abbott is lying to all of you when he says he will repeal the ETS.

Abbott knows that he simply won’t have the money to do it, but he is getting away with pretending he can do it.

All the government needs to do to stop this ‘tax’ is quit selling new permits and quit enforcing adherence to the old ones. The secondary market for permits will then collapse and the ‘tax’ will be effectively repealed.

1) The current government will sell permits before the scheme starts
2) Some of those permits will be forward dated for future financial years, which means they are a piece of property and an asset the company owns and would have to be compensated for under the constitution. That in practice means the Government having to hand over billions of dollars.
3) To stop selling permits or to end the cap, the Parliament would have to pass another bill. But the way the Senate works, it is unlikely to be able to do that until early 2015 at the earliest.

The only value of this ‘property right’ is that it keeps you from being fined or jailed by the government (pretty much like ‘protection’ money paid to organized crime). If the government stops fining and jailing people over it, the ‘property value’ instantly falls to zero.

The permit is what allows the business to put carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

The government can’t stop enforcing its own laws without changing the laws first. The Clean Energy bills have all the regulations written into the bills. The Minister doesn’t have the power to stop the scheme.

Certainly: They government will compensate those companies forced to buy permits the same way they compensate companies forced to pay taxes — not at all.

This would be unconstitutional. The Australian constitution explicitly says that the federal government must compensate individuals or businesses “on just terms” if the Government wants to acquire their property.

It would only take a High Court case by the owner of a coal power station to force the federal government to hand out billions and billions of compensation.

If it’s written into the law that the government MUST buy the permits back, they can simply quit enforcing carbon limits and buy them back at about 0.01 cent on the dollar, after the market collapses.

This would be unconstitutional too. But also there is no such provision in the Clean Energy Bills, it is simply a principle of Australian constitutional law that the federal government must compensate people or corporations if it acquires their property.

The tax changes ARE neutral; I am speaking of the alterations to the tax schedule. As for the handouts/bribes which this wretched government does so well, they are designed to compensate for the price rises from the TAX; they will not do it for reasons explained here:

It is true that the methodology of the TAX will be the purchase of permits [my mistake but it was late and your insouciance is infuriating and distracting as I'm sure you intend it to be] but those permits are the equivalent of tax receipts; the fact that they marketable is not unique; the recognised procedure by which liabilities and assets can be marketed is called subrogation; this characteristic of the permits does not stop the impost from being a TAX.

Name a tax that is a tradeable commodity that is the property of the business.

You can’t do it, because emissions permits are not the same as a tax.

The effects of this TAX will be catastrophic for the Australian economy; we know that because of what has happened in Spain, Greece, Italy and California; and the fundamental point, which you ignore, is that it has NO scientific justification.

When the effects of the Emissions Trading Scheme aren’t catastrophic, and the Australian economy continues to grow faster than all other developed economies, perhaps with the exception of South Korea, will you admit that you were wrong?

What you are arguing against is the difference between the red and blue lines in the left chart. That compares what Gross National Income would be with and without doing anything about carbon emissions. There’s a difference, but it is very slight:http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/557/graphv.gif

But of course the only viable alternate plan is the Coalition’s policy of spending $10 billion a year, that’s about $1000 per house hold, per year, every year which would have a much greater impact on the economy than a market mechanism which drives the cost of abatement to the lowest level possible.

Name a tax that is a tradeable commodity that is the property of the business.

Any property tax which resides with the property/land; any business which has a tax liability or credit can be sold with the rights/liability as part of the transfer; that is what subrogation is. Selling CO2 permits will be a classical example of this.

It is true that the gutless coalition is hedging its bets instead of confronting the justification for this TAX, which is why The Climate Sceptics should be considered as the only political party which is specifically sceptical of the climate science and opposed to such ‘solutions’ as the Carbon TAX.

All this aside what really gets my goat is how anyone can claim that such a TAX will make Australia better off economically. By definition the TAX is designed to raise the costs of cheap energy so the admitted much more costly and favoured W&S [wind and solar] energy sources can achieve price parity with the fossils. This must mean that Australia’s economy will be less competitive with other nations especially since this bunch of hypocrites are going to continue EXPORTING fossils to our competitors!

But the real reason why Australia will be worse off is because W&S DO NOT WORK and they are all that is being offered by the green machine.

It’s not a tax, it is an emissions trading scheme. Businesses must buy permits that after July 1, 2015 they can buy and sell with each other instead of simply having to buy them from the government.

You really just have to laugh.

ETS Day One Year One

An emitting entity HAS to purchase credits from the Government in the amount equal to their emissions. That same amount must then be handed back to the Government at the end of the year. They can trade their shares if they wish, but they must hand back the original number.

If they do not have that number, they then must purchase from the Govt, the amount to make up that total, at the last auction selling price, or if has happened everywhere the price has tanked, then at the set Govt floor price, whichever is higher.

If that emitter exceeds its Cap, it must purchase the ‘make up’ credits from the Govt again at that last auction selling price, or the floor price whichever is greater.

Then on top of that the Company that has exceeded that Cap is then fined in the amount of 1.5 times the excess, on top of having to buy the make up credits, again at the greater price.

Any property tax which resides with the property/land; any business which has a tax liability or credit can be sold with the rights/liability as part of the transfer; that is what subrogation is. Selling CO2 permits will be a classical example of this.

Nonsense! The tax is on the property; what you are selling is the property, no the tax!

It is true that the gutless coalition is hedging its bets instead of confronting the justification for this TAX, which is why The Climate Sceptics should be considered as the only political party which is specifically sceptical of the climate science and opposed to such ‘solutions’ as the Carbon TAX.

Businesses that undertake activity with an emissions level above their ‘business as usual’ level will incur a financial penalty.

Let me propose to you that “financial penalty” is clearly political speak for a fee, levy, charge, or dare I say it “tax”.

So we have Tony Abbott going around the country telling us the sky is going to fall in from an ETS, when his own stupid policy document says that he will do exactly the same thing if he becomes PM.

So I propose to you that what he will actually do if he becomes PM is just keep the ETS that will be in operation, and then say he can’t do anything about it. And the sad thing is some of you are silly enough to believe what he is saying NOW that he doesn’t support the government’s policy, when his own policy document says he sees no problem with making polluters pay. The stupid thing is he is going to surround it with a stupid tax and spend socialist policy which will just amount to throwing money down the drain.

All this aside what really gets my goat is how anyone can claim that such a TAX will make Australia better off economically.

No, it makes perfect sense. All the alternate methods of cutting carbon pollution that we have tried over the last decade have cost 2, 3 or 4 times as much as just setting a market price and letting the market figure out the most efficient abatement methods.

The BEST abatement method in operation is the NSW trading scheme that is already in operation. But that abates carbon at a cost of about $45 per tonne, whereas the federal ETS will start at $23.

I repeat again. There is no major political partying currently proposing that we don’t cut carbon pollution. So the only options on the table are the government’s market approach or the Opposition’s tax and spend nonsense.

The thinking skeptic would support the market system because at least that would ‘waste’ less money.

No this is a blog and I don’t go clicking on random links just because you say I should.

The basic economics of the carbon tax is that the end consumer of electricity will pay more. That also means that the cost of any and all goods and services relying on electricity will COST MORE absolutely.

Um, or they can cut greenhouse gas pollution so they don’t
need to possess as many permits each year.

Um Adam how does a company cut greenhouse gas pollution and not increase
expenditure or decreasing income? That is, capital improvements for CO2
abatement (expense) or reducing production (loss of income) both will
reduce GHG “pollution”…but to what end? Less business or higher
prices, both increase COL thereby reducing standard of living.

The order of the day having been read for the resumption of the debate on the question—That the bill be now read a second time, 12:24:13 PM—

Question—that the bill be now read a second time—put.

Question—put.

The House divided (the Speaker, Mr Jenkins, in the Chair)—
…
And so it was negatived.[Div No. 162], 12:24:45 PM to 12:27:31 PM, Ayes 70, Noes 71

Well I guess that’s fair, I mean, three people with PhDs voted for it and three people with PhDs voted against it.
Yeah, against it. *slaps forehead*

Leave the two lawyers, economist, teacher, and medical administrator aside and you’ve got only one MP left with a PhD in science, and Jensen has a long track record on holding the climate alarmism up to scrutiny and showing it doesn’t pass. Not that his education can help us much now from inside this lame system.

Wyatt Roy: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order on relevance. The question was: how much new clean energy will be produced as a result of the $10 billion?

A very good question young man.

Ms GILLARD: I was explaining the way in which the government’s policy will work. At the centre of it, with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, is not a system where politicians pick winners but a system where we have a board and management with commercial expertise …

HOW’S THE SPIN!??
So when the opposition asks how much the CEF aka carbon tax will cost the public, the closet socialist government responds that forcing the market to pay a tax on carbon is necessary to lead us to the benefits of the Clean Energy Future.
Then when the opposition asks whether these systems will actually generate any power benefit, the closet socialist promptly applies a generous portion of capitalist-coloured lip-service gloss with the astonishing reply that the government shouldn’t say how much power it will actually produce because that would be “picking a winner” in the market.

Julia, please remove that ridiculous capitalist strap-on from your Hegelian regions; you can’t be the mummy and the daddy at the same time.

She’s right about one thing. If they are relying on the wind and the sun to run industry and hospitals then they are certainly not picking a “winner”.

If carbon dioxide, along with methane and nitrous oxide, are such dangerous substances in present concentrations, I want the highest possible price on ‘em.

Actually, I don’t want anyone buying permits to generate these gases, anymore than I want to transfer to my neighbour an entitlement to pour chemicals into Euroka Creek up to a certain concentration. I don’t want to be able to have a tyre-fire on my land after paying my neighbours for their air-pollution credits.

Nonsense! The tax is on the property; what you are selling is the property, no the tax!

Yeah right; in NSW if you purchase a property which has land tax owing on it you are liable for that tax unless you have obtained a S 47 clearance certificate. That is, the tax liability has been transferred to the purchaser.

Um Adam how does a company cut greenhouse gas pollution and not increase expenditure or decreasing income?

Well that’s the beauty of a market mechanism. Unlike the Opposition’s scheme which involves your tax dollars being given to polluters to mandate that they do certain things, a market price simply says that there will be a cost associated with the production of greenhouse gases and it is up to the business to choose the best way to reduce their liability that is suitable for them (keeping in mind that business owners know a lot more about running business than politicians and bureaucrats in Canberra). It may be better in the short term for the business to just pay the permit cost, but in the medium and longer term, investment to reduce pollution would make more sense, especially if that is what their competitors start to do.

In fact it has been estimated that a lot of businesses have simply deferred making improvements to cut pollution because they want to fund it with the free permits that they will get from the government in the early years of the scheme which are then quickly withdrawn, meaning the business will have to fund the permits out of their own pocket.

That is, capital improvements for CO2 abatement (expense) or reducing production (loss of income) both will reduce GHG “pollution”…but to what end? Less business or higher prices, both increase COL thereby reducing standard of living.

Of course there will be higher prices because for the first time the green house gas production will be explicitly included in transaction costs. The Coalition claim that they can magically cut greenhouse gas pollution by the same amount without increasing spending or taxes, or without the cost of electricity rising is at best wishful thinking at worst a flat out misleading lie that everyone on this forum should condemn.

Do really believe tax/permits will not increase the cost of living?

No I don’t believe this at all. The reason I think the cost of living will increase is because 1) The cost of pollution has to be paid for at some point and 2) the government modelling explicitly says that the cost of living will increase.

(Yes I do not the irony of people criticising this government for being secretive, when they have explicitly said that cost of living will go up, including electricity for the average household by I believe $3 a week.)

But the reason I am also not significantly worried about the cost of living is because it is going to be less than 1% and for me the cost will be cancelled out by the income taxes I will get. I won’t be better off, but nor will I be worse off, so, you know, life goes on.

What I don’t like is the Opposition going around pretending that we can reduce our carbon pollution at NO COST. This is clearly a flat out lie and involves Abbott and his ilk treating me and everyone else in the country as if we are completely stupid.

If carbon dioxide, along with methane and nitrous oxide, are such dangerous substances in present concentrations, I want the highest possible price on ‘em.

This would ruin the economy.

You need to acheive certain objectives, but you need to trade things off. If you harm the economy, you won’t have the investment in the technologies and processes needed to acheive the long term objective. That’s why the carbon price will start low and rise over time. This is the best way to allow the necessary economic transition to occur.

This also explains why a market price is the best approach because it responds to demand. If lots of businesses start cutting their emissions, the permit price will stay relatively low (because demand will be low) but if businesses are slack, it will increase quickly, which will just increase the desire to cut emissions. So you will get a steady stabilising of emissions as you can see on the left side of this graph:http://imageshack.us/f/692/graphv.gif/

At the same time the carbon price will be responsive to the over all economic circumstances. If the economy slows, the carbon price will drop because there will be less energy generation, less manufacturing etc which is what will drive the price up.

So the carbon price will act as an economic buffer too, going down during slow growth and increasing when growth is strong.

Actually, I don’t want anyone buying permits to generate these gases, anymore than I want to transfer to my neighbour an entitlement to pour chemicals into Euroka Creek up to a certain concentration. I don’t want to be able to have a tyre-fire on my land after paying my neighbours for their air-pollution credits.

This is a very confusing thing to write. Polluters do pay a price for other activities, such as using dumps. The EPA charges permits for the heating of water that power stations use for cooling.

In nearly everything we buy there are hidden costs associated with the environmental regulations that exist for the production of that product.

If the only thing that mattered was making goods and services as cheap as possible, we would get rid of all our regulations on water and air quality. We would let industries just dump chemicals in the ocean or on land. But we don’t do this because we accept that their are environmental and health consequences from doing so. So instead we have regulations which at the end of the day result in passed on costs that consumers pay when they buy goods and services.

The ETS won’t really be much different from what we already do. It is just a different product that is associated primarily with the production of energy.

Well, you need to think about relative cost again. I will get tax cuts as compensation. But if I cut my electricity use, then I can just spend the tax cut on other things because I will be able to limit the increase in electricity prices, which is the major cost increase. Food is going to go up by less than 1%, so I doubt I’ll even notice the increase at all. Will that really stand out for people when banaas tripled in price simply due to a cyclone Yazi?

Households that earn over $165,000 a year won’t get any compensation at all.

Then Dr. Adam Smith, as an immediate response to the above quote he has just cut and pasted:

So let me get this right. You are saying that Tony can misrepresent something I wrote by writing “you stated it exactly correctly” to something that I didn’t state, but I’m not allowed to point out that he finally conceded that the Government’s policy, and the Clean Energy bills before parliament, set up an ETS and not a tax.

So only households above $165,000 are paying. Have you explained that relative cost to them?

No, that’s not what I wrote.

Everyone will pay the passed on costs that polluters pay for permits. So everyone is paying, just as everyone’s electricity bill includes a passed on cost for the ‘fine’ that power generators pay to Environmental Protection Agencies for the heating of water for power stations that use the water for cooling.

But some people will be overcompensated, e.g. pensioners, while other people will break even, while those on high incomes will receive no compensation, so , if you will, they will be subsidising the increase to pensions and the tax cuts for low income earners.

Whether or not you think it is fair that some households won’t get any compensation at all is really another discussion.

Frankly I have never liked the idea that the government should give hand outs to everyone, so I’m fine with it.

Smith, you are troll; you keep repeating the same rubbish about what this TAX

It’s not a tax, it is an emissions trading scheme.

[will extract from the economy, that people will be better off, that the economy will flourish]

I have explained that the ETS will take money out of the economy, but it will be 6.5 times less than the GST. So if you think the ETS is bad, you may want to think about being consistent and proposing we abolish the GST.

I have pointed out that some people / families will certainly be worse off financially. But some people will be at least not worse off, and others, such as pensioners and low income earners, will be significantly better off. But hey, I realise that you have to just avoid mentioning the things that don’t fit with your argument.

[You are a Green stooge.]

Rather than reverting to abuse, just stick to the issues. Reverting to such childish name calling clearly suggests that you are losing the debate.

It gives us insight into how your extreme left doesn’t care a fig for the ‘real’ people.

What Doctor Smith neglects to tell you while waving his piece of paper around (no, no, Tony, don’t mention Neville Chamberlain) is that he knows absolutely nothing about how electrical power is generated.

He was mercilessly thumped in the earlier Thread, to the point that he just totally ignored any question put to him, by a number of commenters. He just waffled off in his typical, stay on message’ way, not bothering to reply, well, obviously he had to, because he knew nothing, so Rule 2 applies here. Don’t debate anything you don’t know.

I mentioned Year One Day one above, so let’s go to year 2 day one, and this applies for each subsequent year with respect to electrical power generation

The Cap gets lowered, and the emitting entity now has to purchase less credits that the previous year, knowing it has to hand that same number back at the end of the year.

The power plant has 2 options. It generates less power, and when all of them do this, there is therefore less power available at the grids, now already almost tapped out due to Doctor Smith’s State Labor colleagues neglect in constructing new plants to cover the increase in population, and selling off existing plants at what proved to be enormous losses for the sake of a quick buck, which was wasted in other areas in the fom of ‘vote for me’ bribes, and then not allowing those now privately owned plants to upgrade to more efficient power generation methods, and then blaming those dirty rotten moneygrubbing owners for being ‘derdy polluders’.

Keep in mind here we are not talking of lowering the cap by a small amount, but by tens of thousands of credits, so now the plant, to comply, has to generate considerably less power. All of those power plants complying meaning inevitable blackouts.

The second option is to keep generating what they do, pay the make up credits, pay the 1.5 level extra fines, and suffer the penalty of having their cap lowered even further than regulated for the upcoming year, proving what a shell game it really is.

Doctor Smith tells you his piece of paper will drive the move to lowering emissions by forcing power plants to invest in lower emissions technology.

So, in accordance with Smith’s piece of paper, they move to a lower emissions technology.

Smith, the construction of any new large scale plant takes 7 to 10 years. That’s not a damned ‘Command Economy’. That’s how long the plant takes to construct if everything falls into place first time every timeyou fool. Then they have to raise the enormous finance for that new plant, Smith.

In the interim, the Govt, with your piece of paper gouges them each subsequent year for more and more of the money they could be sinking into new power plants, if they weren’t being gouged by that piece of paper.

Don’t worry, however, Smith’s piece of paper will magically make Nuclear power plants appear from thin air, and before you can even blink, because that piece of paper means Nukes will now become acceptable.

Even Smith knows that nuclear power is at least 20 years off, at the soonest, and his precious Labor colleagues aren’t even talking about that, yet, let alone engaging in conversation with the public about.

In the interim your piece of paper is nothing more than a way for your Labor colleagues to pad their Government coffers with money made from the people, Smith, not the polluters, because those power generation Companies just pass the costs straight down to consumers, all of them in the 3 sectors, and only give back part of that to one sector, to some householders in the residential sector.

Smith, keep coming back, Doctor.

You show us starkly that you people have no care for people who will be suffering blackouts, in their homes, in their workplaces, so Smith, effectively your piece of paper will see people not working, hence no income, because Smith, how can people worked in workplaces with no electrical power.

Your piece of paper, Smith, is in fact nothing but a shell game.

You’ll probably come back with how I lost the debate because I got ‘fired up’, or your usual “you lost the debate because…” reply.

Well, Smith, all of us here are ‘fired up’ because when we see people like you who have no concern for your fellow Australians with your piece of paper, we see you for what you really are.

We’ll keep hammering you for answers Doctor, but it’s so frustrating because you have none.

Comparing this tax against gst is an obvious strawman argument. The gst is a tax on almost all goods and services. The carbon tax is a duty to allow industries to pollute whatever the government decides is a pollutant.

So besides admitting that your household earns less than $165K you explain that those $165K households will not get the compensation to offset. (They will suffer a net lower income ie pay the bill)

Um no, there income won’t go down, it is just that their costs will increase.

Everyone will effectively pay the passed on costs. But some people will be over compensated, some people (myself included) will get a tax cut which will match the cost increases, while some households won’t get any compensation at all.

Are you suggesting that the government should prioritise giving hand outs to families on high incomes ahead of those on low and middle incomes?

Maybe that is what you actually believe, but I don’t think it would be fair.

What is the administrative cost of the whole scheme? What will be paid offshore to the UN?

I’m not totally sure. I’d suggest tens of millions of dollars.

But what about the administrative costs of the GST? When that was introduced the federal government had to employ another 800 people at the ACCC and ATO to ensure compliance.

Again, if you are worried about the ETS, why aren’t you worried about the GST which this year alone will raise 650% more than the ETS in its first year?

So let me get this right. You are saying that Tony can misrepresent something I wrote by writing “you stated it exactly correctly” to something that I didn’t state, but I’m not allowed to point out that he finally conceded that the Government’s policy, and the Clean Energy bills before parliament, set up an ETS and not a tax.

I quoted you, I quoted Tony, and I re-quoted what you cut and pasted from Tony’s text.

After which, I quoted from the final Act of Macbeth. The only commentary I offered was that Macbeth was a poor sucker.

Quoting by cut-and-paste is something you do frequently but badly. Often you offer no response at all to what was quoted, and, as I’ve said before, it comes over as a stunt. If you wish to contradict anything I’m writing, might I suggest you do it without cut-and-paste? Just make your case, without pretending to an analytical approach when it often seems you haven’t even read the words quoted. Good idea? I’ll reciprocate, of course.

But now, since you use the strong word “hypocrisy”, I will offer commentary. I’ve read your description of how your free-enterprise-flavoured Big Lever will operate on the collective. I’ve read over and over how new energy sources will “appear” and be more “attractive” due to some “shift” or “transition”. In fact, I can see how a tax can be good. I always believed, and still believe, in the GST. It was as broadly based as any tax can be, and was imposed on what was most abundant in its era: consumption. Payroll tax is the opposite. It is an obscenity. Your tax/ETS/carbon price – which I would call a prepaid transferable fine – is not as bad as a payroll tax, because there’s no way down from there.

The carbon call-it-what you will is a clumsy, selective, indirect consumption tax laid across a fairly consistent, just and necessary consumption tax. Its main danger lies in its ability to be scammed outrageously at all ends, far more than any other financial mechanism seen yet. And this so soon on the heels of ’08! And the clear knowledge that Malcolm Turnbull loves it!

If CO2 is pollution, deal with the pollution as pollution should be dealt with. (Of course, it isn’t pollution, which is why no one is proposing dealing with it as such.)

As Samuel Johnson would have remarked to the real Adam Smith, over coffee at the Turk’s Head:

And PS,
Just because you think you could prove that oxymoron on a financial statement, it would once again mean that it will be taxpayers funding it either by paying the hugely increased bureaucratic costs or the financial management costs or just because taxpayers are indeed either directly or indirectly funding this whole ridiculously expensive obsession.
There is such a thing as ‘indirect’ taxes BTW. That’s often the stuff that just gets passed straight on through to the end consumer…..who is ultimately paying for all this anyway.
A little dose of reality would be much appreciated.

It gives us insight into how your extreme left doesn’t care a fig for the ‘real’ people.

Excuse me? Since when has the extreme left as you have now childishly labelled me advocated the use of nuclear power?

Debate the issues and debate my actual propositions rather than simply asserting that I fit into some stereotype that you’ve created that bares no relation to what I actually believe.

And I have no idea why you put scare quotes around ‘real’. Are these people really real if you call them ‘real’?

He was mercilessly thumped in the earlier Thread, to the point that he just totally ignored any question put to him,

I repeatedly answered your question, but you simply refused to believe that a person of my political persuasive supports Australia using nuclear power. Since I didn’t fit with this stereotype you didn’t know what to do so you just repeated the same question over and over.

The Cap gets lowered, and the emitting entity now has to purchase less credits that the previous year, knowing it has to hand that same number back at the end of the year.

This is incorrect. The polluting entity must purchase sufficient permits (they aren’t credits) to cover their liability. The cap is the total amount of pollution that can be generated by the economy. So obviously Adam Smith’s rules of supply and demand suggests that as the cap is lowered (in order to acheive our reduction targets) the cost of permits will ultimately rise.

The fact the permits will rise over time is what allows the economy to transition without creating sudden shocks. It also encourages businesses to invest in pollution abatement technologies and processes because they know that in the longer term the price of permits will be higher than what it is in the present, they just don’t know how high.

The power plant has 2 options. It generates less power, and when all of them do this, there is therefore less power available at the grids,

Well, no. You have ignored the fact that, if it is worth it, the plant can invest in ways of becoming more efficient so its permit liability goes down. It can produce the same amount of electricity but put out less pollution per unit of energy produced.

now already almost tapped out due to Doctor Smith’s State Labor colleagues neglect in constructing new plants to cover the increase in population, and selling off existing plants at what proved to be enormous losses for the sake of a quick buck,

Hang on a second here. I’m the extreme left socialist, but you are defending the public ownership of power generation? How does that make sense? Power prices have remained lower by having a grid connecting the Eastern states (and S.A.). The states with the fastest rate of power price increases are NSW and QLD, which have government owned distribution networks, and at least some government owned power stations!

which was wasted in other areas in the fom of ‘vote for me’ bribes, and then not allowing those now privately owned plants to upgrade to more efficient power generation methods, and then blaming those dirty rotten moneygrubbing owners for being ‘derdy polluders’.

Why the hell is it the government’s role to upgrade power generators? But if that is what you want, the best way to acheive it is through a carbon price so the industry has certainty and knows what its liabilities will be in the future. The Government is even going to auction off forward dated emissions permits to ensure stability of pricing and supply in the electricity sector.

You seem to want a lot of contradictory things. You want government ownership, but you also what private sector investment (how exactly you’ll acheive both of those things I have no idea, the private sector invests in things they think they will get a return on at some point). You also seem to concede that stability of power prices is important, but you don’t support the carbon price that will guide the investment to acheive that stability by shifting investment to lower polluting sources.

Keep in mind here we are not talking of lowering the cap by a small amount, but by tens of thousands of credits, so now the plant, to comply, has to generate considerably less power. All of those power plants complying meaning inevitable blackouts.

The second option is to keep generating what they do, pay the make up credits, pay the 1.5 level extra fines, and suffer the penalty of having their cap lowered even further than regulated for the upcoming year, proving what a shell game it really is.

Again, the cap is for the TOTAL ECONOMY! A businesses can increase their pollution, but they’ll have to buy more permits, or it can find ways to keep its pollution the same, so they won’t have to buy more permits, or it can cut its pollution and thus need fewer permits.

Doctor Smith tells you his piece of paper will drive the move to lowering emissions by forcing power plants to invest in lower emissions technology.

Yes, it is a basic economic principle that businesses try to reduce their costs in order to maximise profits.

So, in accordance with Smith’s piece of paper, they move to a lower emissions technology.

If that is what makes sense of them that is what they will do. See how this is a much better system than the government mandating what they do?

If I really am an extreme left wing person I’m a pretty funny one, because I see the usefulness of markets instead of government mandates.

Smith, the construction of any new large scale plant takes 7 to 10 years. That’s not a damned ‘Command Economy’. That’s how long the plant takes to construct if everything falls into place first time every timeyou fool. Then they have to raise the enormous finance for that new plant, Smith.

Stick to the issues instead of name calling.

I think I have pointed this out before, but the carbon price will mean that new power stations will be gas, or hopefully nuclear, instead of coal. Brown coal stations will be in a rush to close ASAP.

In the interim, the Govt, with your piece of paper gouges them each subsequent year for more and more of the money they could be sinking into new power plants, if they weren’t being gouged by that piece of paper.

Well there you go. That’s the decision the plant owner has to make. Do they get out and take the government money, or do they go on operating a plant that will quickly become a financial liability rather than an asset.

The market, what an amazing thing.

Don’t worry, however, Smith’s piece of paper will magically make Nuclear power plants appear from thin air, and before you can even blink, because that piece of paper means Nukes will now become acceptable.

I’ve never made such a claim. I have simply proposed that my personal solution would be for Australia to embrace nuclear power with the goal of having our first reactor working by 2020. It is you that seems to talk real Australians and the real economy down by saying this objective couldn’t be achieved.

Even Smith knows that nuclear power is at least 20 years off, at the soonest, and his precious Labor colleagues aren’t even talking about that, yet, let alone engaging in conversation with the public about.

I don’t know nuclear is 20 years off at all, don’t make up my positions for me I am perfectly good at determining them and expressing them for myself.

In the interim your piece of paper is nothing more than a way for your Labor colleagues to pad their Government coffers with money made from the people,

If this were true the ETS wouldn’t COST the budget (that’s right, more money goes out than comes in) $4 billion over the forward estimates.

But hey, you’ve basically given up on facts at this point.

Smith, not the polluters, because those power generation Companies just pass the costs straight down to consumers, all of them in the 3 sectors, and only give back part of that to one sector, to some householders in the residential sector.

Again you have completely missed the point of the carbon price regarding power generation. It will make brown coal uneconomic, and gas becomes cheaper than the most efficient coal plants. So when new plants are built, they will be gas. Which means the emissions intensity of new power stations would’ve about halved.

For someone who says he knows a lot about power generation you seem to be stumbling at the first hurdle on exactly what the carbon price will do.

You show us starkly that you people have no care for people who will be suffering blackouts, in their homes, in their workplaces, so Smith, effectively your piece of paper will see people not working, hence no income, because Smith, how can people worked in workplaces with no electrical power.

You have absolutely no evidence that the carbon price will lead to blackouts. But hey, if it does, that will just prompt a faster adoption of nuclear.

But what these comments do demonstrate is a complete disregard for future generations of Australians. They may only be ‘real’ Australians, that aren’t born yet, but what you forget is that if we don’t curb carbon emissions now we will effectively be shifting the costs onto them. Just as the carbon price next year will start at a level that is double what we would’ve needed if we started an ETS a decade ago.

Your piece of paper, Smith, is in fact nothing but a shell game.

I don’t even know what you are talking about when you refer to this mystical piece of paper, so I guess you can call it whatever you like.

You’ll probably come back with how I lost the debate because I got ‘fired up’, or your usual “you lost the debate because…” reply.

No, you were quite polite, but you lost the debate because your ideas don’t make any sense and demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how carbon pricing will alter the energy generation sector, specifically its patterns of investment.

Well, Smith, all of us here are ‘fired up’ because when we see people like you who have no concern for your fellow Australians with your piece of paper, we see you for what you really are.

I have a lot of concern for my fellow Australians. That’s why I support a market approach to carbon abatement which is the least cost approach according to any credible economist you name, including many conservative economists.

I don’t want my fellow Australians to shell out over $1000 a year per household on Tony Abbott’s tax and spend socialist lunacy that will cost 2 or 3 times as much to acheive the same objective. Don’t believe me? What about the Greenhouse Council who pointed this out just this week, here was a story about it:

…the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network – which represents mining and manufacturing industries – said it agreed with the federal Treasury that Mr Abbott’s plan of achieving 5 per cent emission reductions domestically would at least double the cost, whether done with a carbon price or through his proposed ”direct action”.

Who is this Australian Industry Greenhouse Network? That must be some extremist left wing green organisation right? Well actually here is a list of its membership taken from its webpage:

Industry Association Members

Australian Aluminium Council
Australian Coal Association
Australian Food and Grocery Council
Australian Industry Group
Australian Institute of Petroleum
Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association
Australian Forest Products Association
Cement Industry Federation
Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries
Minerals Council of Australia
National Generator’s Forum
Plastics and Chemicals Industries Association

We’ll keep hammering you for answers Doctor, but it’s so frustrating because you have none.

Tony.

Great, but just keep in mind you aren’t just arguing against me. If pricing carbon pollution is a bad idea for electricity generation and the economy as a whole, and if the Direct Action policy (which is the only viable alternative) is better. Then you aren’t just arguing against me. You are arguing against all the industry bodies and companies I just listed above.

Ah yes,
But that’s because they get to put their hands into the ETS till and have also accessed some amazing ‘climate change’ ‘environmental’ government grants.
Good luck to them.
Even though I do question their morals, a company is a soul less entity anyway and those type of grants certainly make their ‘bottom line’ look healthier!
The opportunity was there so they took it.
Do I think that’s good for all of us?
Well that’s a completely different question.

And PS,
Just because you think you could prove that oxymoron on a financial statement, it would once again mean that it will be taxpayers funding it either by paying the hugely increased bureaucratic costs or the financial management costs or just because taxpayers are indeed either directly or indirectly funding this whole ridiculously expensive obsession.

I can’t even tell what part of my post you don’t understand, so I’ll assume you didn’t understand any of it and explain it using a simpler example.

If debbie has $2 and wants to buy chocolates that cost $1 each, she has enough money (let’s call it income) to buy two chocolates.

if debbie has $2 and wants to buy chocolates that now cost $1.07 each because the ETS was introduced, she now only has enough money to buy 1 chocolate.

But just because she can only buy 1 chocolate, it is wrong to say that debbie has less income, in both instances her income is the same – $2. What she has is less PURCHASING POWER.

This explains why what I wrote makes sense. debbie’s income hasn’t gone down, but she is worse off because her purchasing power has gone down. That is what will happen to families with combined incomes over $165,000 a year when the ETS comes in.

Whether or not it is fair for the government to leave these families worse off could actually be an interesting discussion.

Ah yes,
But that’s because they get to put their hands into the ETS till and have also accessed some amazing ‘climate change’ ‘environmental’ government grants.

So let me get this right. Xstrata Coal Australia Pty Ltd, for example, supports the government pricing carbon using an emissions trading scheme, because it means Xstrata Coal Australia Pty Ltd will be able to get the government to give them grants (even though the ETS means that Xstrata Coal Australia Pty Ltd will have to buy carbon permits to cover the methane released from its coal mines).

Wouldn’t it just be simpler for Xstrata Coal Australia Pty Ltd to oppose the ETS?

Nonetheless, I predict this madness will only last until five minutes after the latte-sipping set (like Adams) realise their favourite local al-fresco cafe cannot run their coffee machine on solar panels, despite all the claims made about “baseload sustainable energy”.

Imagine the dual agonies of having to come terms with the fact that you have been lied to repeatedly by your “heroes”, on the one hand, while desperate for a caffeine fix on the other?

OMG! at 109 he finally admits to my point (to someone else) and claims it was his all along:

This explains why what I wrote makes sense. debbie’s income hasn’t gone down, but she is worse off because her purchasing power has gone down. That is what will happen to families with combined incomes over $165,000 a year when the ETS comes in.

I see you keep repeating this comparison with GST. But you forget to mention that GST replaced all sorts of sales taxes and import duties –ie. there was an offset.
Also in your debate with Tony you are talking about a ETS which I believe starts in 2015 ( or as it is proposed at present) What applies up until then ( after the legislation is implimented) is a TAX –everyone else in Australia ,except for you, is calling exactly as it is.

Especially when you take offence when it was offered in jest and then you completely ignore the point of the post.

There’s no reason to take anything in your posts seriously while you continue to be so childish.

I don’t care if we don’t agree on any issue, but we should at least be civil to each other. Is that so much to ask?

You love lecturing everyone else about the terms of engagement on this site…. when people are truly ofensive they don’t make it past the moderator…or have you not noticed?

Well it depends on what you mean. I have been refered to as Kim Jong Il in several posts that haven’t been taken down. Do you think that is acceptable?

Unlike other sites, all political opinions are welcome here….if you’re offended because some of us have a different opinion, you are posting on the wrong site.

Well that’s clearly not the case at all. There is quite a strong orthodoxy on this site to call people names instead of engaging with their ideas. I’ve been called an operative for Labor, the Greens, GetUp, a socialist, a left wing extremist, Kim Jong Il, a North Korean, all of which are untrue.

It is funny if you’re able to stop taking yourself so seriously and get so very easily offended.

Re-read my post again. I wasn’t offended at all, I’m just under no obligation to take anything you write seriously when you don’t abide by basic aspects of civil discourse.

It is inevitable that there will be blackouts under a carbon TAX; anyone who says otherwise is a fool or liar or both.

And once gain CO2 is NOT a pollutant.

This tax is madness; if it weren’t so serious I would find Smith’s patronising lecturing fascinating, but it is serious and his persistent distortions are symptomatic of the types of rationalising which supporters of AGW and the TAX engage in.

Wouldn’t it just be simpler for Xstrata Coal Australia Pty Ltd to oppose the ETS?

That’s another rhetorical question BTW….I don’t need to answer that one…the answer is embedded in the question.

Who said this was simple?
Since when was company law, tax law, the process of accessing Govt grants and this new mind boggling legislation ever thought about in terms of simple?
You are kidding right?
I so wish your question had some basis in reality because it truly is a lovely question.
Those companies HAVE TO be involved in the ETS if it gets up…..they get no choice.
They HAVE to cover all the bases… otherwise they’re toast.

I see you keep repeating this comparison with GST. But you forget to mention that GST replaced all sorts of sales taxes and import duties –ie. there was an offset.

Yes it did replace the Whole Sale Sales tax on many things. But on many other things, it applied a tax for the very first time.

Over all, the GST now collects more tax than the Whole Sale Sales tax ever did, and well, that’s the point of the GST it is a growth tax that increases directly in proportion to the increase in consumption.

Now, who wants to arrange a convoy to say how damaging this $48 billion consumption tax is to Australian consumption? Surely if we got rid of this tax, the economy would be able to grow at a faster rate as consumption would go up, and there would be more industries, and the cost of living would be almost 10% lower.

Also in your debate with Tony you are talking about a ETS which I believe starts in 2015 ( or as it is proposed at present) What applies up until then ( after the legislation is implimented) is a TAX –everyone else in Australia ,except for you, is calling exactly as it is.

This is wrong. From 1st of July next year companies must buy permits to cover their pollution liabilities. They can sell free permits to each other, but they can only sell bought permits back to the government.

It isn’t the same as a tax because the permits are the property of the business.

This tax is madness; if it weren’t so serious I would find Smith’s patronising lecturing fascinating, but it is serious and his persistent distortions are symptomatic of the types of rationalising which supporters of AGW and the TAX engage in.

I believe you Queens English folks say “hear hear”.

…it is serious and his persistent distortions are symptomatic of the types of rationalising which supporters of AGW and the TAX engage in.

This is wrong. From 1st of July next year companies must buy permits to cover their pollution liabilities. They can sell free permits to each other, but they can only sell bought permits back to the government.

At 1.40pm TonyFromOZ made a lengthy post.
At 2.37pm – less than an hour later, Adam Smith posted a 2,158 word formatted reply.
Not bad – but only the beginning.

Following his post at 2.37pm, through until 3.09pm, Adam Smith made no less than nine posts – all fully formatted, for a total of 1,180 words – an average of over 130 words per post, at an average of a post – fully formatted with block-quotes and everything – every 3.5 minutes.

Further, several of these posts – including block-quote formatting, were apparently written, formatted, and posted in under two minutes, and a couple were done within a minute of the previous one.

Anyone familiar with the posting methodology here (which is everyone who posts), knows that it is impossible to format and post a post while at the same time writing the next one.

And yet Adam Smith has appeared to accomplish this, not once, but several times in succession over the past hour.

.

Dare I have the temerity to suggest “Adam Smith” is not a “person” at all, but rather a group of at least three or four, all sitting around a table, logged on via a wireless router to each other, and this site, working as a team?

I’ve been wondering where MattB has been these last coupla weeks since Doctor Smith appeared. It also seems pretty obvious that he’s not an MD Doctor, because if he is, I can see why he has so much time to spend here ….. no patients.

There is absolutely no market mechanism as a result of government
regulation. A market is a function of supply and demand, not a
fictitious liability as required via third party ruler. That is, if
carbon trading was a true market, it would have been developed by demand
not dictate.

Can you name another government imposed liability which has become a
market traded commodity?

Of course there will be higher prices because for the first time the
green house gas production will be explicitly included in transaction
costs.

Agreed!

But the reason I am also not significantly worried about the
cost of living is because it is going to be less than 1% and for me the
cost will be cancelled out by the income taxes I will get. I won’t be
better off, but nor will I be worse off, so, you know, life goes
on.

1%! A bit pollyannaish don’t you think. If impact to business is to be
only 1% would there be such outcry? If the impact to the citizenry was
only 1%, again such outcry? Tell me Adam Smith, what is the economic
impact to you, of every 1% increase in unemployment? Tell me Adam Smith
what is the economic impact to you of a 1% reduction of growth of AU
economy?

Costs to the whole economy grow not linearly, they ripple exponentially.
More like harmonics then dominoes…each burden reflecting back as
additional charges, tripled, squared, biquadratic or more. 1%…no way.

Having finished here at 3.09pm – at least for the moment – “the” Adam Smith went back to the “unthreaded” thread.

At 3.28pm and 3.30pm he made two posts commenting on the posts since his last appearance there.
His two posts – fully formatted and all – run out to some 1007 words.

So, in summary, “the” Adam Smith went back to the other thread, and in less than nineteen minutes refreshed the page, read the seven posts running to over 1200 words that had been made in his absence, digested them, and then formulated, wrote, formatted and posted two responses totaling over a thousand words.

Fair? sure it would be fair to arbitrarily select $165K. Why not $143,750? or $169,666? Why not re-distribute wealth starting at $100K instead?

Because government is about making choices. The wants of the populace in terms of goods and services is potentially endless, but the amount of tax they should pay (and are willing to pay) is limited. So government’s must set priorities.

In this instance the government has decided that households that earn more than $165,000 a year shouldn’t be eligible for any compensation payments under the ETS, but nor should their income tax as a proportion of their income increase.

You still haven’t clearly said if you think this was an appropriate decision.

At 1.40pm TonyFromOZ made a lengthy post.
At 2.37pm – less than an hour later, Adam Smith posted a 2,158 word formatted reply.
Not bad – but only the beginning.

Following his post at 2.37pm, through until 3.09pm, Adam Smith made no less than nine posts – all fully formatted, for a total of 1,180 words – an average of over 130 words per post, at an average of a post – fully formatted with block-quotes and everything – every 3.5 minutes.

Further, several of these posts – including block-quote formatting, were apparently written, formatted, and posted in under two minutes, and a couple were done within a minute of the previous one.

Anyone familiar with the posting methodology here (which is everyone who posts), knows that it is impossible to format and post a post while at the same time writing the next one.

And yet Adam Smith has appeared to accomplish this, not once, but several times in succession over the past hour.

.

Dare I have the temerity to suggest “Adam Smith” is not a “person” at all, but rather a group of at least three or four, all sitting around a table, logged on via a wireless router to each other, and this site, working as a team?

.

Sometimes a person can be just too clever for their own good.

I resent this baseless assertion. I am simply a pretty good (fast) typist.

There is absolutely no market mechanism as a result of government
regulation. A market is a function of supply and demand…

Well this makes absolutely no sense. If this is your definition of a market, then there are no markets in Australia.

The government regulates many goods and services to determine what the market is. When you go down to the shop and buy milk, it must be pasteurised so it can be sold, and if it has flavouring it will be subject to the GST.

Does that mean there is no such thing is a market for milk in Australia? I don’t think so.

fictitious liability as required via third party ruler. That is, if
carbon trading was a true market, it would have been developed by demand
not dictate.

This is an even worse definition of a market. There is demand for heroin in Australia, as for some reason some people think it is a good thing to consume. Should that be a marketable commodity? I don’t think so, but you seem to be saying if there is demand for something then there should be a market, and that it would be wrong for the government to interfere in that market.

1%! A bit pollyannaish don’t you think. If impact to business is to be
only 1% would there be such outcry?

The average price rise will be 0.7%. The price rise for electricity will be 10%, or about $3 a week for the average household. That is what the best modelling shows us, and remember, it was exactly the same department that modeled the GST which perfectly estimated the price rises. And remember, the GST in its first year raised almost double what the ETS is going to raise!

There is a big outrage because there is just disinformation and people thinking the sky will fall in, when really we are talking about a cost to the economy that is 6.5 times smaller than the GST.

If the impact to the citizenry was only 1%, again such outcry? Tell me Adam Smith, what is the economic impact to you, of every 1% increase in unemployment? Tell me Adam Smith what is the economic impact to you of a 1% reduction of growth of AU
economy?

The impact I referred to was the average increase in the cost of goods and services, it has been modeled as 0.7% for the first year, e.g. July 1, 2012 to June 30th, 2013.

As to the other things, well how do you quantify them? Obviously if I personally lost my job when the unemployment rose by 1% that would be a big impact on me. If I didn’t lose my job, the government would loosen fiscal policy and the RBA would loosen monetary policy (by cutting interest rates) in an attempt to get unemployment back down.

Costs to the whole economy grow not linearly, they ripple exponentially.
More like harmonics then dominoes…each burden reflecting back as
additional charges, tripled, squared, biquadratic or more. 1%…no way.

Well this is a load of nothing. The figure is the cost of increases to goods and services. The estimated reduction in economic growth is 0.1% between 2012 and 2050.

That’s what you are all getting worked over, a figure that will be less than regular economic fluctuations.

The estimated reduction in economic growth is 0.1% between 2012 and 2050.

To put that in perspective:

Federal Treasury’s modelling found an ETS would mean the national economy grew about 0.1 per cent more slowly than it would without a price on carbon, meaning gross domestic product would be about 4 per cent lower in 2050 than would otherwise be expected.

The Frontier modelling produced a similar result, but put the finding in a different context.

“This loss of GDP is worth around $2 trillion in 2007 prices. This is equivalent to around two years of economic growth in the Australian economy,” the report to the NSW Government said.

“To put this in perspective, the cumulative federal government health budget over a 40-year period is about the same size as the most optimistic assessment of the economic costs associated with the commonwealth carbon pollution reduction scheme,” the Frontier study says.

Well this makes absolutely no sense. If this is your definition of a market, then there are no markets in Australia.

The government regulates many goods and services to determine what the market is. When you go down to the shop and buy milk, it must be pasteurised so it can be sold, and if it has flavouring it will be subject to the GST.

Does that mean there is no such thing is a market for milk in Australia? I don’t think so.

So AU had no milk trade prior to regulation? I find that hard to believe. Markets work in spite of regulation not as a result of regulation.

There is demand for heroin in Australia, as for some reason some people think it is a good thing to consume. Should that be a marketable commodity?

If individuals accept the responsibility of their lives then yes, it should be a commodity. It is only the dictates which wish to determine what’s wrong and right for adults. Controlling behavior is the religion of big government types. The question is, do your activity impact my rights…and vice versa…not whether I disapprove of your activities.

The average price rise 0.7%…electricity 10%, hat is what the best modelling shows us, and remember, it was exactly the same department that modeled the GST …There is a big outrage because…The impact I referred to was the average increase in the cost….and the RBA would loosen monetary policy…

Now this may sound a bit dismissive of computerized financial models, but bullshit. If the wizards of smart who wrote the code can predicts increases over ten years due to the unknown impact of definite unrealized liability, why have they not all retired to Shanghai with their huge earning form option trading?

So AU had no milk trade prior to regulation? I find that hard to believe. Markets work in spite of regulation not as a result of regulation.

This is a stupidly simplistic way of looking at things.

Initially the Government owned and ran Telecom Australia which provided telephony services. It was an act of the Hawke government that corporatised Telstra and opened the sector up to competition which led to companies like Optus, and One Tel, Virgin, Vodafone into the TELECOMMUNICATIONS MARKET which has produced cheaper prices.

More often than not these days you need the government to set the parameters which then creates the market for a good or a service.

If individuals accept the responsibility of their lives then yes, it should be a commodity. It is only the dictates which wish to determine what’s wrong and right for adults. Controlling behavior is the religion of big government types. The question is, do your activity impact my rights…and vice versa…not whether I disapprove of your activities.

So you think heroin should be legal and not a controlled substance?

Do you want to take responsibility for the crime and social dysfunction that would lead to?

Now this may sound a bit dismissive of computerized financial models, but bullshit. If the wizards of smart who wrote the code can predicts increases over ten years due to the unknown impact of definite unrealized liability, why have they not all retired to Shanghai with their huge earning form option trading?

Deary me debbie. The government doesn’t buy permits, it auctions them off to the highest bidder!

No wonder you’re confusing me. As several have already pointed out you most definitely posted:

but they can only sell bought permits back to the government.

So they get sold to the government? But the Govt doesn’t buy them?

My, my what a clever government.

That’s me laughing again!

Can I respectfully ask you how that resembles a solid ‘market mechanism’?
Somebody has to come up with the cash don’t they?
I’m certain I wouldn’t sell anything to the government under this arrangement.
Would anyone?
How can they buy them without at least naming a price?

Companies that BUY permits from the government can sell them back to the government at the end of the financial year if it turns out their pollution liability was lower than expected (meaning they don’t need as many permits to cover their liability).

The government simply uses the money that it received when it sold them to buy them back.

Free permits can NOT be sold back to the government for the very reason that the company didn’t pay the government for them in the first place, but the company can sell free permits to other companies because the permit after all is the businesses’ property.

I am sorry if that distinction isn’t clear, but frankly I shouldn’t even need to explain it as it is part of the Government’s policy document.

Adam?
So you think the Govt will still have the money at the end of the financial year to buy back these unused Carbon (02) pollution credits?
Aren’t they planning to redistribute that money for the tax rebates and the offsets?
That’s my understanding of the legislation (which I have read BTW):)
Does it magically double up somewhere inside a financial year?
Don’t forget they also have to pay all the bureaucrats they have employed to manage this absolutely amazing system.
Has anyone ever explained the Dodo bird syndrome to you?

It doesn’t matter how you try to say otherwise….if the government has implemented it and the government is running it…….the taxpayer is paying for it.
‘Twas ever thus
Check your history.

I am sorry if that distinction isn’t clear, but frankly I shouldn’t even need to explain it as it is part of the Government’s policy document.

Nobody has any problem with that distinction. Nobody is saying that, under the proposed system, free permits can be sold back to the government. Nobody is denying that, under the proposed system, bought permits can be sold back to the government. Only one comment is at issue here. Somebody said:

Deary me debbie. The government doesn’t buy permits

And it would now seem that Adam Smith does not agree with that statement made by, well, Adam Smith.

It is odd that a man should disagree with himself. Although I remember an old Columbo episode where the crime was committed by someone’s twin…

And it would now seem that Adam Smith does not agree with that statement made by, well, Adam Smith.

It is odd that a man should disagree with himself. Although I remember an old Columbo episode where the crime was committed by someone’s twin…

I do agree with the statement I made because debbie didn’t specify if she was talking in general or specifically about buy back of permits.

In fact it is one of the most common mistakes made by people opposed to the ETS to say that somehow the GOVERNMENT will be buying billions and billions worth of permits from overseas, when this isn’t true at all. The government won’t buy ANY permits from overseas; why would it need to when it can just sell permits that it creates?

So sure I admit that I answered debbie’s statement incompletely, but that’s because I have seem the same sort of disinformation on other posts on this blog.

Adam,
Why did I have to make a specific statement and how is that suddenly the reason why you completely contradicted yourself?
What was specifically specific about your statement that would lead to that very obvious contradiction when you answered my question?
I am now completely and utterly confused with your attempt at logic.
You are kidding aren’t you?
Maybe you are finally developing a sense of humour?
That might explain it.

You are all wasting a lot of perfectly good electrons arguing with Team Adam.

Team Adam come from a slightly out-phase-parallel universe with what can only be described (in this reality) as some perverse notions. These include, but are not limited to:

The notion that “government” creates all wealth which it then distributes to the masses.

That government is a net creator of, rather than consumer of, wealth.

That a government-imposed impost on costs to businesses and individuals is not a “tax”, but rather an “enterprise-driven”, “free-market incentive”.

That a business, faced with a crippling government-imposed impost, will nonetheless just go on producing at a loss, until such times as a new technology is available to fill the gap, rather than simply closing up shop and investing elsewhere.

That multiple nuclear power stations can and will be built in the next six years, the time-frame Brownshirt Bob and Frau Milne have stipulated for the closure of all brown coal fired power stations.

That banks or other lending institutions will nonetheless happily make funds available for brown coal-fired power stations to upgrade to “fill the gap”, even knowing they will never get their investment back due to the intentions of Brownshirt Bod and Frau Milne as detailed above. These upgrades, incidentally, will be instantaneous.

That the ETS will NOT be overturned, BECAUSE the Greens control the Senate.
However, the nuclear power stations WILL be built, DESPITE the Greens controlling the Senate.

And my favourite; that the ruling Monarch of Great Britain, Wales and Australia cannot so much as take a cr#p without written permission from the Australian PM.

The notion that “government” creates all wealth which it then distributes to the masses.

Where have I ONCE written that government creates all wealth?

I haven’t even written that government creates any wealth!

You must be running out of ideas considering you have just proposed that I believe in something that I haven’t even come close to stating or even implying!

That a government-imposed impost on costs to businesses and individuals is not a “tax”, but rather an “enterprise-driven”, “free-market incentive”.

Pricing carbon is a market mechanism whether or not you like it.

What ISN’T a market mechanism is the ONLY viable alternative that you will have the chance to vote for at the next election. A tax and spend socialist nonsense scheme put forward by the Coalition that will involve your income taxes being taken and given to the owners of power stations in the hope that it will encourage them to make their power stations more efficient. More than likely what will actually happen is the power station will just take the cash and do absolutely nothing.

That a business, faced with a crippling government-imposed impost, will nonetheless just go on producing at a loss,

I have never made such an absurd claim. In fact I have done the opposite by proposing that even a low carbon price will force a couple of brown coal power stations to close much earlier than would’ve otherwise have been the case.

That multiple nuclear power stations can and will be built in the next six years, the time-frame Brownshirt Bob and Frau Milne have stipulated for the closure of all brown coal fired power stations.

Another claim I have never made. If Australia shut down all its brown coal power stations we would cut our emissions by about 15% on 2000 levels. But how can this happen in 6 or 7 years when the ETS has been designed to cut emissions by 5% on 2000 levels by 2020?

Your own made up claims that you assert are my opinions don’t even make sense.

That the ETS will NOT be overturned, BECAUSE the Greens control the Senate.

Well of course, that’s just obvious and I have explained to you why the ETS will never be repealed repeatedly. Joanne even has a post pointing out the massive financial liability the government would expose tax payers to if it ever tried to shut down the ETS.

However, the nuclear power stations WILL be built, DESPITE the Greens controlling the Senate.

It is blatantly obvious that we will only start using nuclear when it is a bipartisan issue that Labor and Liberal vote for together, which would make the Greens holding the Senate balance of power irrelevant.

And my favourite; that the ruling Monarch of Great Britain, Wales and Australia cannot so much as take a cr#p without written permission from the Australian PM.

Well you reverted to hyperbole but the general idea is correct. The Queen plays no active role in Australian politics and simply does whatever the Prime Minister advises her to do.

The notion that “government” creates all wealth which it then distributes to the masses.

Team Adam has spent a couple of weeks claiming the opposition “couldn’t” wind back the ETS because of the cost.
Team Adam has just spent the last three hours on this thread explaining the government could (and would) “buy back” unused credits, using money that the opposition would NOT have to close the scheme down, but the government WOULD have to buy the credits back.

And Team Adam claim the government would STILL have money to meet its various offsetting promises.

Ergo, the current government creates wealth which it distributes to the masses.

I have never made such an absurd claim. In fact I have done the opposite by proposing that even a low carbon price will force a couple of brown coal power stations to close much earlier than would’ve otherwise have been the case.

Followed immediately by:

Another claim I have never made. If Australia shut down all its brown coal power stations we would cut our emissions by about 15% on 2000 levels. But how can this happen in 6 or 7 years when the ETS has been designed to cut emissions by 5% on 2000 levels by 2020?

The problem for you Team Brown, is that while you all readily accept that brown coal power stations are going to be forced to close early (your first statement above) – in fact within six years (as stipulated by Brownshirt Bob and Frau Milne) – you have never answered your own question highlighted in the second part above – “how can this happen in 6 or 7 years?”.

Truth is, it can’t. There will be shortages of power, and scheduled brown-outs and blackouts.

Well of course, that’s just obvious and I have explained to you why the ETS will never be repealed repeatedly.

Yes, I’ve read the Team’s explanations. They more or less go like this:

If the current government passes legislation that henceforth all firstborn babies will be given up for sacrifice to Mother Gaia, and anybody who attempts to overturn the legislation will be fined a million dollars a day, Australians will resign themselves to giving up their firstborn.

I find it highly amusing that Adam is adament that this whole scheme is not going to affect the taxpayer or indeed is not going to be backed by the taxpayer because it is the market, but, then crows about how the liability will be borne by the taxpayer if a government tries to close it down and even points out that Jo has said so.

Joanne even has a post pointing out the massive financial liability the government would expose tax payers to if it ever tried to shut down the ETS.

If it isn’t being backed by taxpayers then how come the liability is the taxpayers liability?

In climate science they verify the observations first: when they fit the models, then they know the equipment worked.

Presumably you’re referring to Willis and the Argo floats. Has there been any testing of the excluded Argo floats? Has anybody contacted Willis with their concerns over his methodology?

No qualifications? Psst, Ivar has a Nobel Prize (and … in Physics). I know Nobels aren’t what they used to be…

Now, I’m not particularly interested in defending this fellow, but in fairness, what he said was “I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings.”
There are a lot of ‘unqualified’ commentators pouring scorn on the findings. Note that that doesn’t discount the possibility that there is some dissent from people who are qualified.

Tristan,
That would depend on your definition of ‘unqualified’.
If the ONLY people allowed to comment have to be qualified in that particular field….WTF is Tim Flannery et al doing????
Just because Julia or Malcolm or Wayne or whichever politician says “I believe in climate change” does that make them qualified?

I also have to take you to task on using the word ‘possibilty’ in your qualifying & concluding sentence.
It isn’t a possibility Tristan, there is definitely dissent from people who are qualified.

And Tristan, there are plenty of people who may not be ‘qualified’ climate scientists but they are qualified to read and to comprehend and to test the models against reality.
It’s actually only climate science, it’s not rocket science.
While the projective part of climate science is rather tricky, the checking against reality is pretty damn easy.
We have had time to check the projections against reality….and guess what? They just aint matching.

Calling a fact stupid does not make it untrue. So again, markets work in spite of regulation not because of them.

Initially the Government owned and ran Telecom Australia which provided telephony services. It was an act of the Hawke government that corporatised Telstra and opened the sector up to competition which led to companies like Optus, and One Tel, Virgin, Vodafone into the TELECOMMUNICATIONS MARKET which has produced cheaper prices.

So the government first set up telephony regulations and then Telecom Australia. Do I have this right?

More often than not these days you need the government to set the parameters which then creates the market for a good or a service.

Complete and utter nonsense. Markets develop first then bureaucratic do gooders try to “fix” the inequities. Be it handheld electronics, flat panel TVs, coconuts,or fish the function trade and barter is well established, then third party dictates get involved.

Probably because economic modelling isn’t options trading?

True, models are not option trading. But options pricing and trading are economic modeling. Option prices reflect a companies future loss/profit (stock) as it relates to:

Delta: rate of change of option theoretical value as the stock changes in value

Gamma: rate of change of delta

Theta: the measures of premium loss each day

Omega: the measure of change in theoretical value with a 1% change in implied volatility

Rho: the measure of change in interest rates

If you can tell pollution tax/permit will net a 1% increase in COL, looking out ten years, then options should be a cakewalk.

So you think heroin should be legal and not a controlled substance?

Do you want to take responsibility for the crime and social dysfunction that would lead to?

Spoken like a true big government theocratic. The bureaucrats, the politicians, the intellectuals know best, the masses are no better then foolish children. So Adam Smith, if heroin was legalized would you be a junkie? Hey why doesn’t the government outlaw obesity?…diabetes is costly. Or control salt or trans-fat?…both lead tremendous health problems and social costs? What about alcohol?

The point, carbon tax/permits will cost the economy much more then 1%.

So the government first set up telephony regulations and then Telecom Australia. Do I have this right?

No, it was the other way around. There was no reason to have regulation when telecommunications was simply run by a government department (PMG).

It was when telecommunications was deregulated starting in the early 1990s that the government had to set up regulations for the market because Telecom Australia (which renamed itself Telstra) then had to compete against other companies.

This is the thing that people in this forum don’t understand. To have a market for something you actually need some government regulation. You need to set up the playing field and the rules that the market operates on.

I appreciate that if you have the mentality that any regulation and any government involvement is bad then you can’t get your head around this basic fact of public policy.

Complete and utter nonsense. Markets develop first then bureaucratic do gooders try to “fix” the inequities. Be it handheld electronics, flat panel TVs, coconuts,or fish the function trade and barter is well established, then third party dictates get involved.

The reason this is wrong should be obvious. Generally speaking PEOPLE DON’T BARTER! We buy and sell things FOR MONEY! And guess what, money can only be created by the government! And guess what #2, the government sets the price of credit via the reserve bank, so all markets are 1) a creative invention of humanity and 2) in some way regulated by the government
[True, models are not option trading. But options pricing and trading are economic modeling. Option prices reflect a companies future loss/profit (stock) as it relates to:

Delta: rate of change of option theoretical value as the stock changes in value

Gamma: rate of change of delta

Theta: the measures of premium loss each day

Omega: the measure of change in theoretical value with a 1% change in implied volatility

Rho: the measure of change in interest rates

If you can tell pollution tax/permit will net a 1% increase in COL, looking out ten years, then options should be a cakewalk.]
None of this has anything to do with modelling a carbon price.

Spoken like a true big government theocratic. The bureaucrats, the politicians, the intellectuals know best, the masses are no better then foolish children.

I didn’t call you foolish. I just asked you to defend your assertion that heroin should be legalised.

The reason this is wrong should be obvious. Generally speaking PEOPLE DON’T BARTER! We buy and sell things FOR MONEY! And guess what, money can only be created by the government! And guess what #2, the government sets the price of credit via the reserve bank, so all markets are 1) a creative invention of humanity and 2) in some way regulated by the government

If we’re talking about the real market, which is the exchange of goods and services, PEOPLE DO BARTER! It’s just that we now use money as the form of exchange.
It is still BARTER!
Also, the government does not set the price via the reserve bank in the manner you claim, nor can the Govt print money as it chooses….that is a very dangerous path to tread.
The Govt doesn’t own the reserve bank in the manner you are suggesting.
They influence the decisions but they do not have the control you seem to suggest they do.
So Adam,
There’s no escaping the fact that the Govt is interfering in the REAL MARKETPLACE by using taxpayer money in a very complicated merry go round in an attempt to FORCE (or maybe BRIBE is a better word?)the real market to do its bidding.
You very obviously think that is a good thing.
I disagree.
I have seen that tried before and I have studied where that has been tried before.
It is not the best solution and is not sustainable.

If we’re talking about the real market, which is the exchange of goods and services, PEOPLE DO BARTER! It’s just that we now use money as the form of exchange.

And who / what determines what counts as money! (HINT: Read the constitution)

There is no such thing as a “real market” anyway. Markets are human inventions.

Also, the government does not set the price via the reserve bank in the manner you claim, nor can the Govt print money as it chooses….that is a very dangerous path to tread.

What on earth are you going on about, of course the government can direct the RBA to print money!

And the RBA, via its board, sets interest rates, which is effectively the COST of money, because it determines the interest rates for interbank lending which gets passed on to consumers.

The Govt doesn’t own the reserve bank in the manner you are suggesting.

YES IT DOES! The Australian federal Government is the sole owner of the Reserve Bank of Australia! Whatever money the RBA makes on currency swaps goes to the federal government balance sheet!

They influence the decisions but they do not have the control you seem to suggest they do.

Of course the federal government no longer directly sets interest rates. But it is wrong to say that the RBA isn’t ultimately owned by the federal government in a financial and legal sense.

There’s no escaping the fact that the Govt is interfering in the REAL MARKETPLACE by using taxpayer money in a very complicated merry go round in an attempt to FORCE (or maybe BRIBE is a better word?)the real market to do its bidding.

The marketplace has failed because the pollution being put into the atmosphere is not accounted for in the transaction price.

The ETS adds the cost of putting carbon into the atmosphere back into the transaction cost. Thus it is a market solution to a market failure.

But I appreciate that this forum is full of people that think markets never fail. They seem to think that health services, for example, should just be handed out to whoever can pay the highest price, irrespective of need.

I have seen that tried before and I have studied where that has been tried before.
It is not the best solution and is not sustainable.

On July 1st next year, a Sunday, you’ll probably be doing what you are today, having a relaxing day, maybe typing some posts on this very forum.

But life will go on. Goods and services will on average be 0.7% more expensive, but wow, prices going up at the supermarket is a fact of life.

The world will keep spinning, life will go on. Ultimately this won’t be a big deal.

Adam,
This is where we have a problem.
You are now suggesting the Federal Govt is a separate entity like a business or a company.
That is also incorrect.
Hint…check the constitution
Your concept of the pollution being not accounted for, means that you believe that this product has a marketable value.
It doesn’t!
Also Adam, despite the present Govt’s most valiant efforts to say otherwise…..CO2 is not a pollutant.
That makes this particular forcing of the market twice negative for the end consumer.
You see Adam, despite all the beautiful economic models you are waving around….if the product does not have a value for the end consumer, then it is not a marketable product.
The value is created by the government using taxpayers to back it up.
It has no inherent value for or of itself.
As soon as the Government decides to no longer support this market with its subsides and grants and paper credits…..this market is completely dead.
And now the legislation they have put in place is attempting to make the taxpayer pay for that as well!
It is all being marketted as a noble cause and also saying that ‘life will go on’.
So if they can’t possibly achieve the goals they are claiming for the necessity of this program …that is…. manage/mitigate/control the climate/weather and if they say that it’s not going to affect anyone much anyway…..WHY IN HELL ARE THEY DOING IT?
If there is no achievable reason and no change…..WHAT IS THE POINT?

And your point is?????
Since when did governments not increase income taxes or all the other junk taxes we live with?
I will point out however that one side of politics is way more inclined to do it than the other.
Despite your obvious belief otherwise, I am not debating labor/liberal with you.
We are debating whether this latest piece of legislation has a stated and achievable goal.
There are many, many, many traditional Labor supporters (and for all you know I could be one of those) who do not like this whole carbon (O2) pollution scam.
That’s why the Labor party is in so much trouble Adam.
They were not given a mandate to do this, in fact their leader definitely stated that she wouldn’t do it under her leadership.
I’m very sad to see that they are trying to squirm out of that lie. I expect better of our elected representatives.
If the opposite side of politics comes up with an equally unacheivable and unsustainable goal, they also will have to face the music.

I would be a lot happier if they all admitted the truth….THEY CANNOT CONTROL THE CLIMATE AND THEY HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT WHICH ARE THE BEST FORMS OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY!
Despite all the hullballoo otherwise, it will ultimately be the market which decides which is the best form of alternative energy…..NOT THE BUREAUCRATS AND THEIR BOSSES!
They are forcing and bribing the marketplace to invest in solar and wind…..that technology wil not cut it!

The Coalition announced today via Joe Hockey that, if they win the next election, they will repeal the above bill thus returning the tax free threshold to its existing level, which means a tax increase for everyone who pays income tax.

So if anyone votes Liberal or National at the next election, they are voting to pay higher income taxes.

I don’t care what you think you are debating. At the next election you will have three choices. Vote to keep the income tax cuts that start on July 1, 2012, vote for the Coalition who will repeal the above bill and thus increase income taxes for everyone that pays income tax, or don’t vote at all.

We are debating whether this latest piece of legislation has a stated and achievable goal.

Why aren’t you calling all these Coalition senators liars for opposing the CPRS twice after the 2007 election and now opposing the Clean Energy bills?

Face it, you don’t care if politicians change their position, so long as they change their position to one that you favour.

And for consistency, I hope you condemed John Howard when he introduced WorkChoices as, by your standards, he had no mandate to introduce such legislation as he didn’t campaign on it at the 2004 election. Or what about the 1998 GST election where Labor won more votes than the Coalition, yet Howard went and introduced the GST anyway, surely you see a problem with that right?

If the opposite side of politics comes up with an equally unacheivable and unsustainable goal, they also will have to face the music.

The Coalition supports cutting carbon emissions by the same amount by 2020 as the government. Except their policy to acheive this goal is just socialism. They think they can take your taxes and pick and choose abatement projects at a lower cost than a market mechanism.

So expect the coalition to increase income taxes higher because they will need billions and billions of dollars to fund all these abatement projects.

I would be a lot happier if they all admitted the truth….THEY CANNOT CONTROL THE CLIMATE AND THEY HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT WHICH ARE THE BEST FORMS OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY!

I agree that politicians have no idea about the best forms of alternate energy. That’s why I support a market price on carbon. By putting this price in place, the market, NOT POLITICIANS will determine which energy technologies should receive the most investment. More money will go to more efficient sources that create less pollution.

Despite all the hullballoo otherwise, it will ultimately be the market which decides which is the best form of alternative energy…..NOT THE BUREAUCRATS AND THEIR BOSSES!

Yes, that’s what the price on carbon achieves. It is a price signal that adds the cost of carbon pollution into the cost of generating energy.

They are forcing and bribing the marketplace to invest in solar and wind…..that technology wil not cut it!

No they aren’t bribing the market place. That’s the Coalition’s policy. The Government’s policy lets the market figure out the best sources of energy.

So let me get this right. Your whole argument for why there shouldn’t be a market for the right to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is “It doesn’t!”.

Great.

Also Adam, despite the present Govt’s most valiant efforts to say otherwise…..CO2 is not a pollutant.

Call it whatever you like, but there will be a cost for putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere starting on July 1 next year.

You see Adam, despite all the beautiful economic models you are waving around….if the product does not have a value for the end consumer, then it is not a marketable product.

What is being priced isn’t the gases themselves. What is being priced is the right to put greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The right will be a permit that will initially sell for $23, this will entitle the holder to put 1 tonne of greenhouse gases, measured in equivalent units of CO2 into the atmosphere. This seems to be your point of confusion, you don’t understand what is being priced.

The value is created by the government using taxpayers to back it up.

The government isn’t using any tax payer’s money to back anything up. As I explained last night, I admit in a confusing way, is that businesses buy permits from the government. How can tax payer’s be liable when businesses are paying money to the government?

It has no inherent value for or of itself.

Yeah just like money. There’s no reason those coins you carry in your purse have value, they only have value because the government says they do, and because everyone is willing to pretend that they do.

OK I jest.

Yes the pollution permits will have a value because they will enable the holders to put pollution into the atmosphere which some companies need to do in their daily business, e.g. companies that create energy by burning fossil fuels.

It doesn’t make any sense to me to say that the permits have no value when they clearly do.

As soon as the Government decides to no longer support this market with its subsides and grants and paper credits…..this market is completely dead.

When the ETS starts up no government will ever end it, because doing so would require the government to pay out billions of dollars for absolutely no gain.

In fact if you want to talk about things that are valueless, that would be a very good example. The government shutting down the ETS, then paying billions of billions to compensate businesses for all the permits that they can no longer use because the government shut down the market for them.

And now the legislation they have put in place is attempting to make the taxpayer pay for that as well!

What on earth are you going on about here? Tax payers get tax cuts, they don’t pay for all the permits.

It is all being marketted as a noble cause and also saying that ‘life will go on’.

And it will. In fact what if we make a pact to meet here on July 1st next year to see how things are going? I suggest you’ll be getting on with your life fine.

Adam,
Check these 2 comments from you here.
You are truly going around in circles.

When the ETS starts up no government will ever end it, because doing so would require the government to pay out billions of dollars for absolutely no gain.

What on earth are you going on about here? Tax payers get tax cuts, they don’t pay for all the permits.

Where would the government have to get the money to pay out billions of dollars for absolutely no gain?
My point was exactly that….if the government stopped supporting this scheme, the market would be dead (because as you believe you have proved beyond any shadow of doubt it has all been invented by the government to put a price on carbon(O2))… and the taxpayer would have to fund everyone out.
Get it?
I know how this all works very well…I am already watching the mess that has been created by the Govt interfering in one of our other essential services…. productive water.
They’re claiming their right to mess that one up in the name of holy and unachievable cause too.

I have no doubt that on July 1st we will all be here.
I don’t usually lecture people but that is a completely nonsensical argument.
What have you proved or disproved by saying that?
You must be pretending we all believe the world is going to end on that day or some such similar?
And just because we will all muddle through somehow….which mankind has an amazing capacity to do….does that make this process either right or wrong?
At what price will that inevitable ‘muddle through’ be? And when we have paid that price….what will be the reward Adam?
Attempting to market the legislation this way is totally nonsensical and rather disingenious…which was my actual point BTW.

I would prefer them to be honest rather than come up with nonsensical spin…wouldn’t you?

Where would the government have to get the money to pay out billions of dollars for absolutely no gain?

Do you mean where or why?

Where would it get the money? Your guess is as good as mine.

It won’t happen is my over all point, because Governments can’t justify paying billions of dollars for nothing. That’s why the ETS will never be repealed.

My point was exactly that….if the government stopped supporting this scheme, the market would be dead (because as you believe you have proved beyond any shadow of doubt it has all been invented by the government to put a price on carbon(O2))… and the taxpayer would have to fund everyone out.
Get it?

And thank you for proving my point. This is exactly why the ETS will never be ended, stopped, repealed etc, because it would force a massive financial liability onto tax payers that the Government could never justify.

So if you don’t want the ETS, you have about 1 month to stop it, else you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life.

I know how this all works very well…I am already watching the mess that has been created by the Govt interfering in one of our other essential services…. productive water.

Well you’ll have to blame the Howard government for that because they set up the water market.

By the way, do you consider water to be a valueless product in a valueless market?

I have no doubt that on July 1st we will all be here.

Good. You have nothing to worry about.

You must be pretending we all believe the world is going to end on that day or some such similar?

I have no idea what you believe really.

And just because we will all muddle through somehow….which mankind has an amazing capacity to do….does that make this process either right or wrong?

Not at all. It just means we need to have sense of perspective on things. When the ETS turns out to be far less of a burden than you think it would be, then your life will just go on.

Attempting to market the legislation this way is totally nonsensical and rather disingenious…which was my actual point BTW.

I’m not marketing anything. I think it will be good for the country because 1) it is the least cost way to shift investment into cleaner energy alternatives 2) the current generation needs to start taking responsibility instead of just dumping the problem onto future generations. 3) the alternative tax and spend socialist nonsense policy being put forward by the opposition would waste tens of billions of dollars.

I would prefer them to be honest rather than come up with nonsensical spin…wouldn’t you?

The Government has been remarkably honest. It has told us that the cost of living will rise. That electricity will go up by 10% in the first year (about $3 a week), the cost of gas will go about about 9% in the first year.

The dishonesty and spin has come mainly from the opposition who have tried to convince us all that they can cut carbon pollution by exactly the same amount by 2020 but it will somehow happen for free without anyone paying higher prices or higher taxes.

Now how does that make any sense? You have asserted that we will all pay higher taxes in the end (even though the government has put a bill to the house of reps to cut income taxes), but do you honestly believe the Coalition when it says it can do everything the government says it is going to do, but for free? With no one paying higher prices, and no one paying higher taxes, and the government spending less money?

You know what Adam?
The problem here is that you are espousing this carbon legislation because you think it is a wonderful idea.
I am criticising it because I think it is a terrible idea.
The policy and the legislation is just a policy and legislation.
You are trying to wrap it up into a political labor vs liberal debate. That’s not ever been my intention. I don’t think either side of politics make any sense on this.
It has turned into a time consuming and insanely expensive obsession.
I guess time will prove which of us is right.

And on the ‘water thing’ did you not notice that I never once mentioned a political party?
Of course I know it was Howard and Turnbull….it isn’t about labor/liberal either Adam….I thought I had already told you that.
And ADAM!!!! Of course water is a valuable product…so is energy!!!!!!!…so is Steel and so are all the other products used or produced by the ‘big polluters’.
I cannot believe you even asked that question!

By the way, do you consider water to be a valueless product in a valueless market?

The bloody pollution, or the ‘right to pollute’ is the bit that I believe has no value in the marketplace….surely you at least understood that part of my post? Surely? If you didn’t then I have some serious doubts about your ability to conduct an open debate.
Or maybe you are just totally clueless about the subject of water policy?
The noble cause behind all of this utter nonsense is based on a completely false assumption that our wonderful Government and all the amazing bureaucrats they will employ can manage nature, the environment and the climate for the benefit of nature, the environment and the climate. They’re stunned that we all just don’t fall around their feet and worship them for doing it. Especially those of us who do not live in the highly over protected urban environment.
Umm….that’s because we know they they can’t
As I said earlier, that is an extraordinary conceit.
I would much prefer them to focus on way more important issues that we are all facing.
The most important would be to upgrade and invest in infrastructure to help cater for growth and prosperity in Australia. The Government should do that and invest heavily in that.
We have room and we have the ability to produce….not only should we be doing that for ourselves, I would argue we have a moral responsibility to do it on a global scale.
We can’t do that well if our stupid Government (either side of politics) keeps interfering and jamming up the progress.
We have all learned how to do that and be environmentally responsible….we have known how to be environmentally responsible for over 50 years! We actually learn from mistakes and we also can learn how to fix them…if we were actually allowed or encouraged to do so. The government could encourage people to do so….they’re not doing a good job of that (either side of politics)
Right up there with that would be to invest in decent medical research and untangle the disgusting and complicated nightmare of health insurance. The Government REALLY should invest heavily in that. Instead they have progressively complicated the rules.
And we also need to make sure we have a proper safety net in place to look after those who have not managed to prosper in Australia. We need a fair and sensible social security system. THE GOVERNMENT COULD DO THAT TOO! Instead they have just progressively complicated those rules.

BUT…OH NO…for years they have been focusing on investing in ways to be masters and protectors of mother nature.
What a complete joke….and once again Adam…it’s both sides of politics.
We need to protect ourselves

FROM

Mother Nature!
Especially in Australia.
She will wash you out, dry you out, burn you out, blow you out, plague you out or use numerous other destructive tools in her arsenal.
She is not your friend and she certainly isn’t the Government’s friend…..she never was!
So I am never going to think our insane obsession with changing the climate and protecting the delicate balance of nature (that is just such a completely ridiculous notion) is a good idea.
The rest is just stupid political spin and clap trap.
AND IT IS BOTH SIDES OF POLITICS!!!!!

You know what Adam?
The problem here is that you are espousing this carbon legislation because you think it is a wonderful idea.

Guilty as charged! Maybe “wonderful” is going a bit far, but it is a good idea that will save us and future generations a lot of money compared to the alternative which is the Opposition’s tax and spend socialist nonsense policy.

You are trying to wrap it up into a political labor vs liberal debate. That’s not ever been my intention. I don’t think either side of politics make any sense on this.

Well that’s just bad luck because who becomes P.M. is a zero sum game. If the Labor leader doesn’t win, the Liberal leader will. So at the next election you have two choices, the status quo ETS that would’ve been operating for a year and a bit, or the Coalition’s policy which is to increase income taxes and start taking that money and handing it over to polluting industries in the hope they will cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

The status quo is a better option, and it won’t result in income tax increases.

I guess time will prove which of us is right.

Yes it will. And I’ll give you this promise. If it turns out that the ETS comes in and the economy stops growing, and unemployment goes up, I’ll say that I was wrong.

But that won’t happen. Life will go on, prices will rise a little, but many middle and low income tax payers will get significant tax cuts to offset those increases.

And ADAM!!!! Of course water is a valuable product…so is energy!!!!!!!…so is Steel and so are all the other products used or produced by the ‘big polluters’.

So is the atmosphere.

The bloody pollution, or the ‘right to pollute’ is the bit that I believe has no value in the marketplace….surely you at least understood that part of my post? Surely? If you didn’t then I have some serious doubts about your ability to conduct an open debate.

How can there be no value when it will cost $23 for each tonne of CO2 equivalent put into the atmosphere. That sounds like a value to me.

The EPA charges the owners of power stations for the heated water they put back into lakes or the ocean. Are you saying that that is valueless too?

The noble cause behind all of this utter nonsense is based on a completely false assumption that our wonderful Government and all the amazing bureaucrats they will employ can manage nature, the environment and the climate for the benefit of nature, the environment and the climate.

No I don’t believe in the wisdom of politicians and bureaucrats. That’s why we need markets so people can trade commodities for the least cost. They evaluate what they think something is worth and then decide whether it is worth more or less than the money they paid for it or could get for it by selling it.

That’s the market approach, the Coalition’s approach on the other hand…

The most important would be to upgrade and invest in infrastructure to help cater for growth and prosperity in Australia. The Government should do that and invest heavily in that.

Like you mean schools, roads, hospitals etc? Well if the Coalition is spending billions and billions of money on carbon abatement, or handing over grants and subsidies to polluting companies in the hope they will reduce their pollution, where will the money come from for these infrastructure projects you desire?

The market mechanism will reduce the cost of abatement to as low as it can go. The Direct Action policy the coalition proposes will cost at least double or perhaps much more because history shows us that politicians are hopeless at picking and choosing abatement projects.

But thank you for expressing a desire that the government spend money on some things. Some in this forum seem to have the attitude that governments shouldn’t spend money on anything.

We can’t do that well if our stupid Government (either side of politics) keeps interfering and jamming up the progress.

In general I agree with you, after all it was the Labor governments of Hawke and Keating that deregulated the Australian economy which opened it up to massive amount of investment both domestically (from Superannuation, which is now over $2 trillion) and overseas.

But in specific instances I disagree with you. Sometimes governments must intervene to set up the market which facilitates competition. The deregulation of banking, telecommunications and the carbon price are good examples.

We have all learned how to do that and be environmentally responsible….we have known how to be environmentally responsible for over 50 years! We actually learn from mistakes and we also can learn how to fix them…if we were actually allowed or encouraged to do so. The government could encourage people to do so….they’re not doing a good job of that (either side of politics)

Maybe so. But in many other instances environmental improvements such as better air and water quality were only achieved when governments introduced regulations. And of course these policies have costs. If we want the cheapest goods and services we wouldn’t have any environmental protections at all. But most people accept paying somewhat higher prices for goods and services if it means we can keep the environment clean for future generations.

Right up there with that would be to invest in decent medical research and untangle the disgusting and complicated nightmare of health insurance. The Government REALLY should invest heavily in that. Instead they have progressively complicated the rules.

Well I’m not sure what you are referring to here because 1) The Australian federal government is the biggest investor of health research in the country 2) All Australians are eligible for health insurance in the form of Medicare which is funded by a 2.5% charge on taxable income.

Australia has universal health insurance coverage, at a very low cost by world standards. If you take into account income taxes and expenditure on health insurance (which for Australians is the Medicare levy, but for Americans is private health insurance premiums), Australians pay lower income taxes than Americans, but are all covered by health insurance.

And we also need to make sure we have a proper safety net in place to look after those who have not managed to prosper in Australia. We need a fair and sensible social security system. THE GOVERNMENT COULD DO THAT TOO! Instead they have just progressively complicated those rules.

Australia does have a federally operated social security system. Most of the complications over the last decade have been caused by more and more hand outs to families on middle and high incomes. It has been used as a form of vote buying instead of helping those truly in need.

“….I would like to start this analysis of the Club of Rome by listing some prominent members of the CoR and its two sub-groups, the Clubs of Budapest and Madrid. Personally it isn’t what the CoR is that I find so astonishing; it is WHO the CoR is! This isn’t some quirky little group of green activists or obscure politicians. They are the most senior officials in the United Nations, current and ex-world leaders, and the founders of some of the most influential environmental organisations. When you read their reports in the context of who they are – its gives an entirely new, and frightening, context to their extreme claims.

Some current members of the Club of Rome or its two siblings:

Al Gore – former VP of the USA, leading climate change campaigner, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Academy Award winner, Emmy winner. Gore lead the US delegations to the Rio Earth Summit and Kyoto Climate Change conference. He chaired a meeting of the full Club of Rome held in Washington DC in 1997.

Javier Solana – Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, High Representative for EU Foreign Policy.

Maurice Strong – former Head of the UN Environment Programme, Chief Policy Advisor to Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the Rio Earth Summit, co-author (with Gorbachev) of the Earth Charter, co-author of the Kyoto Protocol, founder of the Earth Council, devout Baha’i.

Mikhail Gorbachev – CoR executive member, former President of the Soviet Union, founder of Green Cross International and the Gorbachev Foundation, Nobel Peace Prize winner, co-founder (with Hidalgo) of the Club of Madrid, co-author (with Strong) of the Earth Charter.

Diego Hidalgo – CoR executive member, co-founder (with Gorbachev) of the Club of Madrid, founder and President of the European Council on Foreign Relations in association with George Soros.

Ervin Laszlo – founding member of the CoR, founder and President of the Club of Budapest, founder and Chairman of the World Wisdom Council.

Anne Ehrlich – Population Biologist. Married to Paul Ehrlich with whom she has authored many books on human overpopulation. Also a former director of Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club, and a member of the UN’s Global Roll of Honor.

Hassan bin Talal – President of the CoR, President of the Arab Thought Forum, founder of the World Future Council, recently named as the United Nations ‘Champion of the Earth’.

Sir Crispin Tickell – former British Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the Security Council, Chairman of the ‘Gaia Society’, Chairman of the Board of the Climate Institute, leading British climate change campaigner.

Kofi Annan – former Secretary General of the United Nations. Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Javier Perez de Cuellar – former Secretary General of the United Nations.

Gro Harlem Bruntland – United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change, former President of Norway

Robert Muller – former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, founder and Chancellor of the UN University of Peace.

Father Berry Thomas – Catholic Priest who is one of the leading proponents of deep ecology, ecospirituality and global consciousness.

David Rockefeller – CoR executive member, former Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, founder of the Trilateral Commission, executive member of the World Economic Forum, donated land on which the United Nations stands.

Stephen Schneider – Stanford Professor of Biology and Global Change. Professor Schneider was among the earliest and most vocal proponents of man-made global warming and a lead author of many IPCC reports.

Bill Clinton – former President of the United States, founder of the Clinton Global Iniative.

Jimmy Carter – former President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Bill Gates – founder of Microsoft, philanthropist

Garret Hardin – Professor of Human Ecology. Originator of the ‘Global Commons’ concept. Has authored many controversial papers on human overpopulation and eugenics.

Other current influential members:
(these can be found on the membership lists of the COR (here, here, and here), Club of Budapest, Club of Madrid and/or CoR National Association membership pages) ……..”

The bloody pollution, or the ‘right to pollute’ is the bit that I believe has no value in the marketplace….surely you at least understood that part of my post?

I believe that the general principle: ‘If you make a mess, clean it up’ is applicable when it comes to GHG emissions (and many other things).

There is some probability range for climate sensitivity to GHGs. How do we obtain that? An analysis of 0.95 confidence intervals from some selection of estimates. When you combine that with a similarly constructed damage bill estimate for various levels of warming/cooling you know what sort of insurance the world should be paying. There doesn’t need to be ‘certainty’ to purchase insurance, you buy insurance according to the damage:probability function and the cost:benefit analysis associated with the various levels of spending.

Adam I am done with you.
You wrapped every argument in Labor political campaigning.

How completely and hopelessly blinkered.
Have a nice election

I’m not blinkered at all. At the next election you will have a choice between keeping the ETS which would’ve been in operation for a year and some months, and will include income tax cuts. Or you can vote for the Coalition which is currently promising to dismantle the ETS (but you know that won’t actually happen because it would cost tax payers perhaps $10 billion) and will result in them increasing income taxes for everyone by repealing the bill that changed the tax free threshold.

So there you have it folks!
The Gummit backed up by the bureaucrats, bankers and brokers have figured out FINALLY how to charge us all for the air we breathe…and it doesn’t really matter which side of politics it is.
Because they couldn’t control our supply of the atmosphere they have formulated a plan that justifies the need to ‘protect’ it from carbon based life forms who need to breathe and civilization that needs to produce!

Hence this comment….

So is the atmosphere.

And because it is such a masterful sales job and so many of us fell for it, it is imperative that this plan is protected forever.
After spending so much time and money figuring out how to charge us for the air we breathe, we couldn’t possibly allow it to be dismantled….hence this comment….

I’m not blinkered at all. At the next election you will have a choice between keeping the ETS which would’ve been in operation for a year and some months, and will include income tax cuts. Or you can vote for the Coalition which is currently promising to dismantle the ETS (but you know that won’t actually happen because it would cost tax payers perhaps $10 billion) and will result in them increasing income taxes for everyone by repealing the bill that changed the tax free threshold.

And just in case we do figure out a way to dismantle the legislation, then here is the back up plan courtesy of Tristan….

When you combine that with a similarly constructed damage bill estimate for various levels of warming/cooling you know what sort of insurance the world should be paying. There doesn’t need to be ‘certainty’ to purchase insurance, you buy insurance according to the damage:probability function and the cost:benefit analysis associated with the various levels of spending.

And last but not least we’re all being re assured that ‘life will go on’ .

And it will. In fact what if we make a pact to meet here on July 1st next year to see how things are going? I suggest you’ll be getting on with your life fine.

If nothing else you have to congratulate them all for the mastermind plan that it is

We can now be legitimately charged for the right to breathe and we have a ‘market’ for the air that we breathe.

I sincerely hope that a decent cost/benefits analysis has been done as our ruling elite considers how this windfall will be re distributed.
Both sides of politics say they can…..we shall see.
If history is anything to go by…. I seriously doubt it.
The next generation will likely be subjected to yet another master mind plan to charge them for something else they traditionally believed was their basic inalieble right. (and yes I know I spelt that wrong but I can’t be bothered to look it up )

Andrew McRae (@59):
September 17th, 2011 at 8:43 am
It would seem not all “skeptics” are created equal.

It is worth noting that in the USA the official Skeptics society position on CAGW is that global warming is real, it is being caused by human activity, it is dangerous, and that the evidence is overwhelming.

Andrew, there is no “official” Skeptics society in the US. (For one thing, real skeptics — those who think for themselves — wouldn’t join.) This is a self-designated label by groups who, as far as I can tell, exist only to promote the status quo and the acceptance of “official” authority. They don’t let little things like their arguments being debunked stop them from repeating them ad infinitum (similar to warmists, actually).

I refer to the groups that publish “The Skeptical Inquirer” and “Skeptics magazine”. Their membership (at least the ones they publish in the “letters” section of the magazines) seems to be similar to those who unquestionly accept the “official” version of CAGW — this makes them feel so much smarter and moral than those cretins who doubt. These are sheep, not skeptics.

Tristan,
Well sort of….you see the whole political program is based around the fact that we ‘accept AGW’.
It’s a bit tricky isn’t it?
By asking that very clever question, you are ignoring the the fact that there are two parts to this classic pincer movement.
I would call that question part of a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy, wouldn’t you?

He’s doing a PhD in Philosophy; this series of responses to his comments will be analysed pro bono and ad nauseam and submitted for a certain pass. This type of degree is a bit like AGW; if you believe you can get published.

Don’t expect any scientific comment from Dr Gee. Am I jumping the gun?

Sorry Tristan,
It’s the same question….worded differently but nonetheless the same.
So therefore…..HMMM…..maybe it’s the same answer?
I did answer it BTW….did you get blinded by the fact that I said your question was clever?
I didn’t mean to distract you from my answer….my apologies.
And the gender of our names is relevant to anything we have been discussing because ?????????
Maybe Mary has the answer?
Is it part of your PhD to study the gender breakdown or demographics of whatever?

If a hypothesis has compelling evidence for it then yes of course it is possible to be a skeptic and to accept a point of view on basis of the evidence in support of it. Also a skeptic is someone who would be constantly thinking about a problem and re-evaluating it. A skeptic is not someone who says “The science is settled”, who has complete conviction in their position, or subscribes to the idea that following consensus is a sound method of evaluating the veracity of a hypothesis.

In context of climate change, your question needs to be framed against what flavour of the hypothesis. GW/CC, AGW, or CAGW? There are plenty of skeptics like myself that provisionally accept AGW but do not have a firm articulated view, or provisionally reject, CAGW and the asserted urgency to completely restructure our civilization in order to address AGW above all other environmental concerns. It is a question of supporting evidence satisfying ones individual minimal standards.

Actually I think it is quite telling that there are few dyed in the whool skeptics that publicly accept CAGW or, as Jo has pointed out in the past, there is no-one who had a decent working knowledge of the subject matter that transitioned from doubter to believer (but plenty who have gone the other way). Does this mean that there is insufficient evidence for the case of CAGW to satisfy any skeptic?

People like Simon Singh would claim to be a skeptic, but I would strenuously contest Singh’s right to self-apply such an adjective. Making fun of Chiropractors and new age cultists might be good clean fun (and good for him, personally I prefer competitive sports); but baiting people you feel intellectually superior to and being a skeptical thinker are not the same thing.

Is there are way to objectively measure whether or not someone is a skeptic? Can it be quantified? Maybe that is the real question you are asking.

I did answer it BTW….did you get blinded by the fact that I said your question was clever?

This was your answer?

Well sort of….you see the whole political program is based around the fact that we ‘accept AGW’.

I don’t understand this bit: “you see the whole political program is based around the fact that we ‘accept AGW’”

And the gender of our names is relevant to anything we have been discussing because ?????????

It’s not. I’m just surprised by the number of cross-dressers.

Is it part of your PhD to study the gender breakdown or demographics of whatever?

I’m not doing a PhD in philosophy.

In context of climate change, your question needs to be framed against what flavour of the hypothesis. GW/CC, AGW, or CAGW? There are plenty of skeptics like myself that provisionally accept AGW but do not have a firm articulated view, or provisionally reject, CAGW and the asserted urgency to completely restructure our civilization in order to address AGW above all other environmental concerns. It is a question of supporting evidence satisfying ones individual minimal standards.

Well put.

Is there are way to objectively measure whether or not someone is a skeptic? Can it be quantified? Maybe that is the real question you are asking.

That is the sort of question I like to ask. Some here seem to believe that all free-thinkers (I use the term with trepidation) are on the same side of the fence; that fits my understanding of the way opposing groups view one another but doesn’t seem like an accurate assessment.
Can it be quantified? I expect so, given an adequate definition. Maybe by examining the neo-cortex and medulla, maybe via Q&A regarding our fear of being wrong and our willingness to be contrary.

“”And the gender of our names is relevant to anything we have been discussing because ?????????
Maybe Mary has the answer?”"

As people who have been following this site for a while will know I am a bloke.

Truth is Debbie I am very sensitive and find that people are kinder to beautiful young women.

Sadly I am not beautiful, not young but my wife is a woman.

I do hope I have not disappointed you by doing this, but meant no harm and perhaps this other persona was a counter to the seriously intense and blinkered approach of the pro -AGW bloggers who post here.

I don’t know, Tristan is the one doing a Psychology PhD, maybe he can offer a comment on why so many people who believe that Global Warming via CO2 is real also have absolutely no clue about the scientific base to this claim.

They are just told by a higher, more cunning authority and therefore are free to believe.

Someone else has taken on the responsibility of explaining Man Made Global Warming for them.

Many people on this site would not consider themselves as skeptics but rather scientists.

I do know of a member of the local skeptics society who was a physics professor here. Many years ago he did a carbon dioxide balance on two competing processes of electricity production; coal fired power and wind power. He suggested that there was no CO2 advantage in wind power.

The core issue here is the science and terms like Left or Right , Skeptic or Non Skeptic are just part of the peripheral discussion and can be used as a distraction from the science.

Having studied the claims of CAGW for several years now I consider myself Distrustful rather than Skeptic.

Working through the Science of AGW is a slog but doable for anyone who is qualified.

Trying to deal with the Deceit and Misinformation from sources which should be reliable on the science is disturbing and unpleasant.

I am now more cautious of “authority” and disgusted by greedy people who distort science.

I don’t know, Tristan is the one doing a Psychology PhD, maybe he can offer a comment on why so many people who believe that Global Warming via CO2 is real also have absolutely no clue about the scientific base to this claim.

Now it’s a psych PhD? Why do so many people who believe that QM is real have no clue about it’s scientific basis?

Many people on this site would not consider themselves as skeptics but rather scientists.

There’s a great comment from Nicola Scafetta at WUWT in response to Trenberth’s latest travesty of a paper. I hope Anthony and Jo don’t mind if I reproduce most of it here

Trenberth presented his theory that the lack of warming observed since 2000 was nothing but an occasional decadal variation of the ENSO. Essentially, he used his GCM to prove that sometime the computer simulations could run flat for periods of 10 years from where he deduced his interpretation of the lack of warming as a momentarily red noise fluctuation.

One day after Trenberth, I presented my own results regarding the quasi 60-year climate oscillation that explains the observed patterns in the temperature since 1850 quite better than Trenberth’s hypothesis.

After my talk Trenberth appeared quite shocked, he could not believe it. Of course he started claiming that my way to analyzing the data was not acceptable but he was not able to prove why. On the contrary, I proved to him that his GCM model was totally unable to reproduce the warming from 1910 to 1940 and the cooling from 1940 to 1970. His model essentially runs flat until the 1960s and then starts to rise!

After, I gave him my three last papers on the 60-year cycle which would seriously question the AGW theory.

N. Scafetta, “Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications”. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72, 951–970 (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jastp.2010.04.015

No. “Skeptic” and “unquestioning acceptance of authority” are mutually exclusive.

191Tristan:
September 19th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
I didn’t think it was that clever. I was just wondering whether people here thought it was even possible to fulfill the definition of ‘skeptic’ yet also endorse the idea of AGW.

I have to agree with you that it wasn’t clever — Which raises the question: why do you do it? Do you enjoy demonstrating your shallowness? Regardless, Andrew Barnham has crafted a well thought out reply to your non-clever question, which you have, of course, ignored since you didn’t ask the question in order to get an answer anyway.

P.S Why do so many guys on here have female names?

And your evidence for this is …? Probably the same as the evidence for most of your other claims — nothing. (Found any examples of skeptical scientists who have “adjusted” the data to fit their hypotheses yet?)

Why do so many people who believe that QM is real have no clue about its scientific basis?

Why do you assume that everyone else is as ignorant as yourself? There have been a number of discussions about quantum mechanics on this blog.

But to answer your throwaway question: The truth or falsity of any particular theory of QM (or, rather, metatheory — it is the metatheories that try to decide “what QM means” that are contentious) has little relevance to most people. If, however, proponents of some particular metatheory start demanding massive intervention in the world’s economic and social systems (and massive transfers of wealth) to prevent some predicted apocalypse — e.g., they start acting like scam artists — then more people will start taking an interest in the supporting evidence.

(An alternate response to your question could be: Why do so many people who think that television works have no clue about it’s scientific basis? The answer is obvious — television can be demonstrated to work.)

I consider myself a nuisance.

I would add, “frivolous”, since you don’t seem to take anything you say seriously.

Is there are way to objectively measure whether or not someone is a skeptic? Can it be quantified? Maybe that is the real question you are asking.

That is the sort of question I like to ask. Some here seem to believe that all free-thinkers (I use the term with trepidation) are on the same side of the fence; that fits my understanding of the way opposing groups view one another but doesn’t seem like an accurate assessment.

Another Tristanian evidence-free suspicion?

Can it be quantified? I expect so, given an adequate definition. Maybe by examining the neo-cortex and medulla, maybe via Q&A regarding our fear of being wrong and our willingness to be contrary.

By that definition, mules would qualify as “skeptics”. I can tell you from experience, however, that only those who have to deal with them care what mules think. To encompass the concept of a “skeptical scientist” you would have to include logic and the ability to reason from data. To be a “go with the crowd” scientist, you need neither of those traits, as this book clearly demonstrates — you only need to come to the “correct” conclusions.

Sorry Tristan, but quoting a website with “skeptical” in its name doesn’t make you a skeptic (unless by your truncated definition of being contrary).

There is sufficient evidence that John Cook (proprietor of Skeptical Science) lies when convenient and depends on credulous readers like yourself not to do any due diligence and catch him. Here, here, and here are some examples.

I’ll address one of John’s lies you linked to, in the ‘basic’ summary of Riccardo’s response to the PDO claim.

The basic synopsis says “The PDO shows no trend” the advanced synopsis says “The PDO is an oscillation with no trend.”

I’m not sure what the precise definition of trend is*, but for any oscillation you can pick two points and run a ‘trend line’ through it. ie Between AD1000 and AD1500 you’d get a positive slope from fitting a least-squares regression to the PDO. Does this equate to evidence of lying? No, but it is a confusing summary. Fortunately, you’re given a chance to read a detailed explanation under the ‘advanced’ header. Yay!

*I suspect it’s something like ‘an oscillation which is anchored to a particular value from which it deviates from via some probabilistic function.

I see that Nicola Scafetta has responded to your comment. Maybe now you might realise that characters like John Cook are not above “verballing” and deliberately distorting the work of those with whom they disagree.

Also, if you believe that Cook’s CV compares with many of those he seeks to disparage, well, that’s your business.

I see that Nicola Scafetta has responded to your comment. Maybe now you might realise that characters like John Cook are not above “verballing” and deliberately distorting the work of those with whom they disagree.

I realise that people (including myself) can be hasty in their judgement. For instance, the graph I linked to is no longer used as a rebuttal to the Scafetta’s work. There is distortion (deliberate or due to bias) from both sides of pretty much every issue there is! People see what they want to see. That’s why I consider it important to follow both sides of the issues I’m interested in.

Also, if you believe that Cook’s CV compares with many of those he seeks to disparage, well, that’s your business.

He was quite deferential at WUWT. Nicola Scafetta replied to his comment within two hours to set him right about Cook’s scurrilous tactics. Tristan added an addendum stating that the offensive SS graphic was no longer available which struck me as creditable.

The argument that: if you are not a qualified climatologist; you don’t know nothing, listen and obey… In my old country, there is a saying: ‘’I am not a bird either – I cannot lay eggs, but I know when the egg is rotten.’’ What comes from the ‘’climatologist’’, is rotten to the last fund and grant.

It’s a draw-back, to be a climatologist. Because they have all have learned from same books. Most of them are in the Warmist camp; but the ones in the Skeptic’s camp are shooting themselves in the foot even more. In the past, some of them finds some proof that some place was colder = the whole atmosphere was colder! Was it?! Another one finds a dinosaurs in Alaska = the planet was very hot, to sustain coldblooded dinosaurs there = they give a name for that warm period. When it gets in education books = becomes official = they all learn from those books = graduate; after they clone more idiots of themselves = here is the end result: Nuclear Winter for the year 2000. Before we even defrosted; to make the urban sheep to forget – they turned into Global Warming by 5-6⁰C by 2060. Then they moved the post, 1,5⁰C by 2100. (I have all the solid proofs about their lies, not in 100years, NOW)

Cannot comprehend that: if it was warm enough for dinosaurs with no wool or feathers to survive in Alaska – Alaska was on same latitude as now – in equatorial regions, the temperature would have being above water boiling point. The truth: by wobbling of the planet, Alaska was further away from the poll = warmer; but other place was closer = that other place was colder. Palm fossils on Antarctic, planet was very hot, to have palms there! Was it very hot = would have boiled all plants / animals in Indonesia. But that is too complicated and boring; to sat that Antarctic was warmer, many other places were colder –to balance. The laws of physics don’t permit the WHOLE planet to get warmer by 1⁰C, how can it get warmer by 8-9⁰C?! As soon as it gets warmer by 0,1⁰C –air expands instantly / appropriately up – intercepts extra coldness in 3,5 seconds – that coldness falls down and equalizes. But the truth is too simple, not profitable to con the students and the masses…

So, they have Maunder minima / maxima… was the whole planet’s atmosphere warmer / colder? Most definitely not. Same laws of physics were then as now. Because climatologist lost reality – now they are looking for bigger sun, more or less sunspots, for not getting warmer as they predicted…? Their 6000 thermometers were showing warming – now they are showing cooling…? The truth: it was warmer where the highest concentration of monitoring places are, USA /Europe. It was colder some other places, as Oceania, south America. Now is reversing. Therefore wasn’t any GLOBAL warming – now the planet is not getting cooler. Only warmth and coldness are shifting.

Most of climatologist are in the Warmist camp, they know that those findings were misleading, but the Climatologist in the Skeptic camp have a good grip on the past phony GLOBAL warmings /coolings. Their Smarties are faithfully preparing ‘’backdoor exits’’ for the Warmist. Because is promoted by the Skeptic scientists = they cannot see : ‘’that the egg is rotten’’ …

Lets see if this can help you smell a rat: do you know that troposphere is 998999ppm oxygen + nitrogen? 2:do you know that those two gases are very sensitive in change of temperature; warm – instantly expand – cool – instantly shrink?! 3: do you know that: where atmosphere expands – is much, much colder than on the ground?! 4: can CO2 prevent O+N of expanding when warmed?! 5: do you think that 98 was different laws of physics than 2011? Or 1200AD, or 5BC???

All of those that are running away from those few simple questions / from both camps = proof what the bias media and the shonkiest profession ‘’climatology’’ have done a good job, to all of you. You should take them in class action; I’ll be your witness. People that can smell the stench from the ‘’climatologist’’ get some real proofs; http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com No, planet wasn’t warmer; no, she is not cooling now.

MarkD: Since most are producers of electricity, we know they will pass this tax onto their customers. Since supply is limited and no new sources of electricity are on the horizon, this is reality.
What is the benefit? NONE!

Not true. To change the consumption of different products (or in this case the production of a by-product) you don’t need to change the absolute cost, it is the relative cost that counts.

Yes, Smith — we know that government can intervene in the market place by tilting the balance in various directions by imposing arbitrary costs or giving arbitrary subsidies to various actors. Usually these interventions result in a net loss for the citizens, since no one in government knows enough to predict the consequences, thus these interventions are usually based on political biases and often controlled by plain corruption.